You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most of the discussions, articles and other free features. By joining our Virgin Media community you will have full access to all discussions, be able to view and post threads, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload your own images/photos, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please join our community today.
Trump administration tells agencies they can ignore Musk order on email reply
The Office of Personnel Management told HR officials that employees wouldn’t be let go for not replying to an email asking what they did last week.
The Trump administration has told federal agency leaders that they can ignore the public decree from Elon Musk to effectively fire employees who do not send in bullet-point summaries of their work last week, according to three people familiar with the matter, a break with the billionaire who has exerted significant power to slash the 2.3-million-person federal workforce.
The Office of Personnel Management, a federal agency that functions as the government’s HR department, delivered the news to agency chief human capital officers on a call midday Monday, according to one of the people, an agency official on the call, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations.
Another person briefed on the call said that OPM is also looking at weekly reporting for government departments. But the person said that OPM was unsure what to do with the emails of employees who responded so far and had “no plans” to analyze them.
Musk on Saturday posted on his social media platform, X, that federal employees would receive an email asking for a list of what they did at work last week and would be considered as having resigned if they did not reply by Monday at 11:59 p.m. Eastern. Shortly thereafter, the email blast went out to millions of people, including federal judges and workers in the legislative branch — prompting confusion as agency heads struggled to apply the guidance to their particular work. Even before the latest directive, some agencies told workers not to comply, fearful that they might, at OPM’s behest, be disclosing information that was sensitive or important to national security.
__________________ Thank you for calling the Abyss.
If you have called to scream, please press 1 to be transferred to the Void, or press 2 to begin your stare. If my post is in bold and this colour, it's a Moderator Request.
Responses to the Elon Musk-directed email to government employees about what work they had accomplished in the last week are expected to be fed into an artificial intelligence system to determine whether those jobs are necessary, according to three sources with knowledge of the system.
The information will go into an LLM (Large Language Model), an advanced AI system that looks at huge amounts of text data to understand, generate and process human language, the sources said. The AI system will determine whether someone’s work is mission-critical or not.
__________________ Thank you for calling the Abyss.
If you have called to scream, please press 1 to be transferred to the Void, or press 2 to begin your stare. If my post is in bold and this colour, it's a Moderator Request.
President Donald Trump backed Elon Musk’s demand that federal employees explain their recent accomplishments by the end of Monday or risk getting fired, even as government agency officials were told that compliance with Musk’s edict was voluntary.
Confusion and anger over the situation spawned new litigation and added to turmoil within the federal workforce.
“What he’s doing is saying, ‘Are you actually working?’” Trump said in the Oval Office during a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron. “And then, if you don’t answer, like, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired, because a lot of people aren’t answering because they don’t even exist.”…
…(Musk) continued to threaten firings hours after employees were told that they didn’t need to comply with his demands.
“Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance,” he posted on X, his social media platform. “Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”
__________________ Thank you for calling the Abyss.
If you have called to scream, please press 1 to be transferred to the Void, or press 2 to begin your stare. If my post is in bold and this colour, it's a Moderator Request.
Services: Humane elimination of all common Internet pests
Posts: 38,049
Re: President Trump 2.0
That would result in the effective break-up of 5I. Which, I agree, would be exactly the sort of thing you would instruct your asset in the White House to do, if they were senior enough in the administration to bring it about. AFAIK the network operates on the basis of pooling and sharing. What goes into it, goes around all members. It’s unclear to me how it would be possible for one member to cease sharing with one other. Mind you, I’m assuming he’s given this any thought whatsoever. If Trump was one for thinking, he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to misrepresent the French government’s position on aid/loans to Ukraine in a live press briefing whilst sitting next to the President of France.
Thankfully I doubt it's going to happen. The UK would probably be able to veto it.
If it did would the other countries find it easier to exclude the United States instead? I wonder how concerned our intelligence services are with sharing information with them at this point.
Intelligence is one of the areas where we're quite valuable to the US IIRC. Our government's lack of concern for privacy means we're used as a loophole for the stuff they are constitutionally unable to do and GCHQ know what they are doing. If America has decided her enemies are her friends and her friends are her enemies then let's see how that plays out in practice.
Services: Humane elimination of all common Internet pests
Posts: 38,049
Re: President Trump 2.0
Security and intelligence co-operation really is the litmus test of the alliance. Governments come and go and political priorities change but at an operational level there is a very deep level of co-operation particularly between the UK and the US - to the extent that in the hours after 9/11 when nothing was allowed to take off or land anywhere in the US, the only aircraft allowed to fly in was a senior delegation from MI6.
Again, you have to ask if a literal Putin plant in the White House would be doing anything different to what Trump is doing.
Talking about Russian assets There is a humorous story about Trump being recruited 40 years by Russia and being even given a code name: "Krasnov". The story seems to have been pulled from US web sites:
So earlier today, the Daily Beast’s Isabel van Brugen published a bombshell story about allegations by Kazakh Spy Chief Alnur Mussayev that the KGB had recruited Donald Trump as a Soviet Asset way back in 1987 under the code name “Krasnov.”
I expected to see this story covered heavily here, but nary a peep, and within hours, it was scrubbed from both the Daily Beast’s site, as well as various other outlets on the internet. There is no retraction on the Daily Beast site, or even any acknowledgment that the story existed, and several republishers have pulled the story as well.
If you go to Google news and search “Trump Krasnov,” you may still find a couple of sites where the story, either in the van Brugen version, or under other bylines, is still up, but they are dropping like flies.
Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset over 40 years and proved so willing to parrot anti-western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow, a former KGB spy has told the Guardian.
__________________
Unifi UCG Ultra + Unifi APs | VM 1Gbps
WASHINGTON, Feb 25 (Reuters) - The White House said on Tuesday that Amy Gleason is the administrator for Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.
Gleason, a top Musk adviser, is a former official at the U.S. Digital Service.
In a meeting on Tuesday, USDS employees met with two DOGE representatives—Amy Gleason, a former Trump administration USDS official, and Kendall Lindemann, a former consultant at McKinsey & Company. The discussion aimed to clarify DOGE’s vision for the agency following the abrupt terminations.
According to sources, Gleason and Lindemann informed staff that DOGE would take a more active role in managing the organization moving forward. They also stated that all remaining USDS employees would now be considered part of DOGE, effectively merging the two teams.
This marks a shift from earlier in the transition when USDS employees reported that DOGE had intentionally separated its new members from the legacy staff, even implementing a “firewall” between the groups. Before Tuesday, the only DOGE representative attending broader USDS meetings was Stephanie M. Holmes, who had introduced herself as the new HR lead.
Despite Musk’s visible role in pushing the DOGE transition, there is ongoing confusion about who is officially in charge. On Monday, Joshua Fisher, director of the White House Office of Administration, filed a sworn statement asserting that Musk is not the formal administrator of DOGE. Instead, Fisher described Musk as a “senior advisor” to the president, with no more authority than other White House advisors.
This lack of clarity has left USDS employees frustrated. Many have asked for the identity of the current administrator but have yet to receive an answer. During Tuesday’s meeting, Gleason and Lindemann declined to disclose leadership details, deepening uncertainty.
__________________ Thank you for calling the Abyss.
If you have called to scream, please press 1 to be transferred to the Void, or press 2 to begin your stare. If my post is in bold and this colour, it's a Moderator Request.
This is quite something. A few months ago the Canadian liberal party, the current government, was something like 20 points behind the Conservatives led by Poilievre.
It was seen as a done deal the next government would be Conservative and Poilievre was the darling of the Western right for how successful he was being against the Liberals and their leader, Justin Trudeau.
They are currently changing their leader, with the Bank of England's very own Mark Carney being a candidate, and have just taken the lead for the first time in 4 years:
Some of this is probably Trudeau going but most of it appears to be a rebellion against Trump's sabre rattling towards Canada which has allowed Trudeau and the Liberals to rally against him in a way that Poilievre seems unable to do because of his association with 'the right'.
Obviously, it's early days and I think the polling will revert. The Conservatives are likely to win the next election albeit with a much smaller majority than expected. It's still an example of how Trump might disadvantage the right across the western world.
---------- Post added at 10:29 ---------- Previous post was at 08:50 ----------
MAFA!*
Make America Flat Again
__________________ Thank you for calling the Abyss.
If you have called to scream, please press 1 to be transferred to the Void, or press 2 to begin your stare. If my post is in bold and this colour, it's a Moderator Request.
That video looks like Grand Theft Auto which is pretty much how it is now. Will they only reject the notion because its not being untaken by a country or person for that matter with strict Islamic beliefs.
Join CF
You are here: 
Baby, I was born this way.
There is a humorous story about Trump being recruited 40 years by Russia and being even given a code name: "Krasnov". The story seems to have been pulled from US web sites:
