The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Wed, 19 Feb 2025
Rachel Maddow looks at how principled resignations are not only slowing down Donald Trump's agenda to destroy the U.S. federal government, but are drawing attention to the sketchy stunts Trump and Elon Musk are trying to get away with.
Chapter 1: How are federal resignations affecting Trump's agenda?
Really happy to have you here. It has been another one of those days. NBC News reporting tonight that the Trump administration accidentally, oops, totally didn't mean to fire the people working on bird flu. No idea how that happened. Now the bird flu experts at USDA, they are trying to hire them back.
They did this with the National Nuclear Security Administration as well, which we talked about on last night's show. Now it's with the bird flu workers. Oops. What does this button do? Does anybody know what this button does? I thought I should ask because just a minute ago I just pushed it. Does anybody know what it does? Got any other buttons I can push?
The Washington Post reports tonight that the Trump administration is considering a plan to incinerate $500 million worth of COVID tests that you've already paid for. It's not because there's anything wrong with these COVID tests. It's just because, I guess, you know, COVID tests. Icky. $500 million worth of perfectly good COVID tests that we, the taxpayers, already purchased. They are in storage.
They are stockpiled right now, set to be distributed for free to the American people in the event of another big uptick in COVID. But instead, the Trump administration apparently wants to destroy them because, you know, government efficiency. The Trump administration just today fired more than 10 percent of the staff at the National Science Foundation.
National Science Foundation was founded in 1950 to promote science and engineering and work on U.S. defense and public health. National Science Foundation provides a quarter of the federal support that goes for basic research at NASA. America's colleges and universities. It's how we fund astronomy observatories. It is how we fund our research stations in Antarctica.
Trump just today fired a huge proportion of their workforce. A senior engineer at the GSA, the General Services Administration, has also just resigned today, reportedly after trying to block people working for President Trump's top campaign donor, Elon Musk, trying to block one of Musk's guys from a system called Notify.gov. Notify.gov is a system whereby the government can contact you directly
Individual citizens can be contacted directly from federal agencies. It is a secure system. It's obviously very sensitive because it's your personal cell phone number that is linked to information about you and your status and involvement with any number of government agencies. Obviously, that's a very sensitive thing. But this man named Thomas Shedd, who until recently worked for Tesla...
but was just installed inside the GSA by the president's top donor, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla. Mr. Shed apparently demanded full read-write access to that Notify.gov system.
In response, the lead engineer in charge of that system, a GSA employee named Stephen Riley, apparently, quote, objected to Shedd's ability to view phone numbers and variable data for members of the public, information that Shedd, quote, would be able to download and store without anyone knowing.
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Chapter 2: What controversial actions has the Trump administration taken?
She said if it applies to the ones in Maine, that would be, quote, devastating. So certainly they don't mean Maine, right? They couldn't. Republicans just eating it in their home districts and their home states as their party's leader does things that are devastating to those states and to those constituents. And just seeing that in states all over the country is a lot of things.
It gives me many, many feelings of many different kinds. But as a matter of political science, it's also important to watch in terms of what kinds of constraints this president, this administration might ever feel. Political scientists will tell you that one of the only constraints that matter on an ascending authoritarian is the constraints put on him by his own party.
The distance between what people think they voted for and what people realize they got ultimately does matter. Sometimes it's the only thing that matters. The Wall Street Journal yesterday spoke with Trump voters. who just one month in say they are now horrified by what they helped cause when they voted for Trump. Quote,
Stacey said, quote, when we said safer borders, I thought he was thinking, let's stop the drugs from coming into the country. I didn't know he was going to start raiding places. She said she didn't believe he would actually follow through on some of the more hardline policies he touted during the campaign.
The 49-year-old Omaha, Nebraska resident said, quote, now I'm like, dang, why didn't I just pick Kamala? Emily Anderson from Duluth, Minnesota, categorizes her vote for Trump this year as the, quote, biggest mistake of my life. She is horrified by Trump's focus on deportations and use of Guantanamo Bay to hold migrants.
She says that Trump has been too focused on, quote, ridiculous, flashy moves such as banning paper straws and renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Anderson's daughter's occupational therapist has stopped taking new patients over fears that the practice will have its federal funding dry up. Anderson said, quote, I feel so stupid, guilty, regretful. Embarrassed is a huge one.
I am absolutely embarrassed that I voted for Trump. So as long as we still have a political process, right? Voters feeling that way. Trump voters feeling that way. Republican elected officials desperately seeking exemptions for their state from what Trump is doing to try to save their constituents from what Trump is doing, saying Trump's policies are bad if they apply in their state.
Republicans finding Trump's actions and chaos and dysfunction not only damaging but indefensible, and they're being caught out at home, unable to defend the indefensible. If we still have a political process, that will matter in terms of what Trump can do and for how long. But there's one last thing I want to introduce into the mix here, one real wild card to watch for along these same lines.
And it is something that isn't a bread-and-butter, home-district economic issue like these ones I've been talking about. It's actually a big-picture issue. But I think its political impact is something that's going to be important to watch because I think there's a chance it might be bigger than what they are expecting, at least what the pundit class is expecting.
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Chapter 3: Why are resignations at the GSA raising concerns?
I'm Kristi Noem, the United States Secretary of Homeland Security. Thank you, President Donald J. Trump, for securing our border, for deporting criminal illegal immigrants, and for putting America first.
Kristi Noem, the new secretary of Homeland Security, thanking her boss in a commercial. The Department of Homeland Security says this will be a nationwide multi-million dollar ad campaign praising President Trump. And the multi-millions in question here are not like Kristi Noem campaign funds or Donald Trump campaign funds. It's official Homeland Security funds.
Taxpayer dollars to praise Donald Trump for his great leadership and to warn illegal immigrants to stay away because Donald Trump is so great. Your taxpayer dollars at work, dear leader ads that we're paying for out of Homeland Security funds.
Meanwhile, in the name of austerity and government efficiency, members of the CDC's public health team that has been responding to an ongoing tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas City, Kansas, they've been let go because, you know, got to pinch our pennies, got to be very efficient in the era of doge, doggy, dodgy, whatever they want to call it.
Today, the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston closed abruptly. A sign on the door cited an executive order, and the library clarified in a statement that it had closed because of, quote, the sudden dismissal of federal employees at the JFK Library. By tonight, the National Archives had announced that the JFK Library will reopen tomorrow, but who knows?
It was a surprise to them when they had to close today. As you're getting ready to file your taxes, looking forward, hopefully, to a tax refund? I hope. Senior officials at the IRS have reportedly identified 7,500 IRS employees for possible firing right now. Less than eight weeks from when taxes are due.
USA Today offering its readers today this advice, quote, IRS cuts may mean refund delays and long waits. File early before potential cuts, CPAs say. While all that has been playing out in the news today, there's also the matter of what exactly is happening at the Social Security Administration.
At the Washington Post and NBC News, it was reported last night that the acting head of the Social Security Administration had suddenly resigned after some kind of clash with Elon Musk's team over access to sensitive data in the Social Security system. Now, this story, again, first reported last night. It's still evolving tonight.
The events so far are worrying to a lot of people who depend on their Social Security checks. We've got a former leader of the Social Security Administration joining us to sort out what we know next. So many Americans depend on their Social Security as their primary income, as a big piece of their income.
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