onfocus

"Although several positions supporting [bird flu efforts] were notified of their terminations over the weekend, we are working to swiftly rectify the situation and rescind those letters," a USDA spokesperson said in a statement. "USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service frontline positions are considered public safety positions, and we are continuing to hire the workforce necessary to ensure the safety and adequate supply of food to fulfill our statutory mission."

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Four out of 10 Americans have shifted their spending over the last few months to align with their moral views, according to the Harris poll.

I am one of those four. I haven’t made any Amazon purchases in 2025 and canceled Prime.

“A lot of these diversity programs and multicultural centers on campuses were founded as retention tools to help students who had been shut out of higher education in some of these institutions for centuries,” Harris said. “To penalize institutions for taking those steps to help students, that is actually very much an echo of the segregation era.”

Not even trying to hide their racism.

“These reckless firings will slow down critical cleanup work and make workers less safe – trying to run Hanford with a skeleton crew is a recipe for disaster that could have irreversible impacts,” Murray said.

The federal government is not a social media company. Social media can go offline for a while, not a big deal. Nuclear accident, not reversible. This level of recklessness is distressing.

One disabled veteran who worked at Veterans Affairs overseeing patient care said he learned of his firing by email Thursday. He was one month shy of graduating from his probationary period, he said. The email cited “performance” as the reason. “This is ironic,” he said, “because my most recent — and granted, only — performance evaluation was the highest you could possibly achieve at my agency.”

The cruelty is the point. Horrible, horrible people. As I often say here, please vote for people who care about other people. There is a difference. (Linked to an archived version of this article because Bezos is the worst.)

“We have come up with a new slogan for LLS: ‘the disease detectors.’ If you’re not testing, you don’t know what disease is there,” a current fellow, who was among those who received termination notices, told NBC News

Trimming the fat.

The firings hit the FAA when it faces a shortfall in controllers. Federal officials have been raising concerns about an overtaxed and understaffed air traffic control system for years, especially after a series of close calls between planes at U.S. airports. Among the reasons they have cited for staffing shortages are uncompetitive pay, long shifts, intensive training and mandatory retirements.

Trimming the fat.

Here are some of the basic ingredients of a truly pro-business atmosphere: The rule of law; a functional and predictable court system; enforceable contracts; intelligible regulations; trustworthy and accurate government data; widely available well educated and healthy workers; and strong public services that create a customer base that is, itself, healthy and wealthy and flourishing enough to spend money freely.

Business leaders thinking mafia style is preferable to a predictable legal system are in the FA stage of FAFO. (Linked to an archived version because Substack is the worst but this article is good.)

If the uncertainty is getting to you, I have the plainest and most time-tested advice which is: Unless or until clarity about the most crucial levers becomes available, do what you can reach. Make the calls. Care for the people you can find. Hold on by hanging onto each other.

Great advice, and some good resources to check out.

…screens and all the technologies that accompany them are tools to make the world seem more predictable and less uncertain: infinite scroll; autoplay; the always-on “live” news cycle; the steady drumbeat of notifications; the apps that summon servants to our doors, hiding all the labor and improvisation and accidents (often involving blood and bone) that go into moving atoms from one place to another. These tools train us in convenience, which is training in predictability, in the facade of certainty. And when that facade inevitably breaks, we often find ourselves at sea.

Strategies for living with uncertainty.

One day, I saw what felt like Gorton on a ferry traversing the waters Bay Area. A few weeks later, I spotted it on a sign in a national park. Then on an intercom. On a street lighting access cover. In an elevator. At my dentist’s office. In an alley.

Beautiful story of discovering some surprisingly ubiquitous typography that tells us about past production methods.

The individuals, who work in an agency that overseas the nation's nuclear stockpile, had been fired on Thursday and lost access to their federal government email accounts.

Trimming the fat.