Trump Guts Health Agencies in “Valentine’s Day Massacre”

Donald Trump spent his Valentine’s Day weekend firing health workers en masse from the government. 

Thousands of probationary employees in the Department of Health and Human Services were told they would lose their jobs following four weeks of leave, just one day after Robert F. Kennedy was confirmed as health secretary. All affected employees had only worked for the department for one or two years, or had recently been promoted. 

These employees included people working on improving health care, regulating food packaging, or responding to infectious-disease outbreaks. Many of them even had to tell their own bosses that they had lost their jobs, and their termination notices claimed they had poor job performance, according to The Washington Post, which obtained several such letters and spoke with former and current employees. 

“Unfortunately, the agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the agency’s current needs, and your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment in the agency,” the messages stated.

Jim Jones, the Food and Drug Administration’s deputy commissioner for human foods, resigned on Monday, citing Kennedy’s remarks about FDA staff and the “indiscriminate firing” of 89 members of the agency’s food program. 

“I was looking forward to working to pursue the Department’s agenda of improving the health of Americans by reducing diet-related chronic disease and risks from chemicals in food,” Jones wrote in a letter to the FDA’s acting chief.  “It has been increasingly clear that with the Trump Administration’s disdain for the very people necessary to implement your agenda, however, it would have been fruitless for me to continue in this role.”

The cuts also hit the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drawing an outcry from patient advocacy groups. 

“The cumulative effects of threatened cuts to federal health research funding and forced departures at our nation’s premier health agencies will put our global leadership and our nation’s health at risk,” a coalition of such groups, including the Friends of Cancer Research and the American Diabetes Association, said in a statement. 

Kennedy is only just starting his takeover of the department, which means the radical overhaul is only just beginning. In the coming weeks and months, the damage to America’s public health could be catastrophic.

The Trump administration has opted to deflect blame rather than share solutions for the drastic recent uptick in deadly plane crashes.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy decided Monday to trash his predecessor Pete Buttigieg at length for a decades-long problem, even as Donald Trump continued to erode federal aviation staffing over the weekend.

In response to a post in which the ex-South Bend, Indiana, mayor asked for details on how many Federal Aviation Administration personnel had been fired under Trump’s watch, Duffy claimed that “Mayor Pete failed for four years to address the air traffic controller shortage and upgrade our outdated, World War II-era air traffic control system.”

“In less than four weeks, we have already begun the process and are engaging the smartest minds in the entire world,” Duffy posted.

“Here’s the truth: the FAA alone has a staggering 45,000 employees,” Duffy continued. “Less than 400 were let go, and they were all probationary, meaning they had been hired less than a year ago. Zero air traffic controllers and critical safety personnel were let go.”

Duffy then went on to blame Buttigieg’s support of eco-friendly initiatives—as well as the department’s decision to allow federal workers to work from home—as rationale for accidents.

“The building was empty!” Duffy wrote.

But that’s not the entire story. Some of the FAA workers who were unexpectedly let go by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency over the weekend were responsible for maintaining “the critical infrastructure that keeps the air traffic control system operating,” according to CNN aviation correspondent Pete Muntean.

The U.S. has experienced an unprecedented uptick in critical aviation accidents, with four major aviation disasters taking place since Trump took office. Before 2025, the last deadly crash involving a U.S. airliner was in 2009—but despite the disturbing trend, Trump has opted to blatantly and vaguely blame minorities rather than work towards tangible solutions to backfill the air traffic controller shortage.

After a mid-air crash in January between a passenger plane and a U.S. military Black Hawk helicopter over Reagan International Airport killed 67 people, Trump pointed a finger at diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, blaming inclusive work initiatives for the deadly lapse.

“You’re talking about extremely complex things, and if they don’t have a great brain—a great power of the brain, they’re not going to be very good at what they do and bad things will happen,” Trump said at the time.

Former NTSB investigators and safety advisers have pointed to the decades-long air traffic controller shortage as the underlying cause of the crashes, and told Newsweek that the FAA should re-prioritize “aeronautical decision-making.”

Under Buttigieg’s stewardship, the FAA increased hiring, placing 2,000 new employees in the system. But their numbers will just barely replace some 1,100 staff who are either retiring or exiting the high-stress field.

“That’s because nearly half of those hired in any given year will wash out of the program before they get to actually control aircraft after about three years from their initial start date,” CNN reported.

National Air Traffic Controllers Association President Nick Daniels told CNN that the FAA needs to focus on “maximum hiring” for air traffic controllers, warning that it could take as long as eight to nine years to get the department up to snuff.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association represents some 10,800 certified controllers in the country—but work conditions for them are extreme. Approximately 41 percent of union members are working six days a week, 10 hours a day, to backfill the immense shortage left by some 3,800 open positions.

Other critics have pointed to the executive order-initiated federal hiring freeze as a potential tension point for the FAA.

The order called for a total review of “all hiring decisions and changes to safety protocols” made during the Biden administration, while also alleging the former president “egregiously rejected merit-based hiring, requiring all agencies to implement dangerous ‘diversity equity and inclusion’ tactics, and specifically recruiting individuals with ‘severe intellectual’ disabilities in the FAA.”

“This review shall include a systematic assessment of any deterioration in hiring standards and aviation safety standards and protocols during the Biden administration,” the order read.

Donald Trump’s so-called border czar Tom Homan begged the Department of Justice to provide a reason to “start taking action” against Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Monday for teaching people in this country about their rights.

During his second appearance on Fox News Monday, Homan once again took aim at the New York congresswoman for her Know Your Rights campaign, which has been educating immigrants on their legal rights when dealing with ICE enforcement.

“She wants to go out saying she’s teaching people their constitutional rights, yeah, you can call it that. We all know what she’s up to. She wants to tell these people how they evade arrest,” Homan said.

Homan’s recent press campaign has involved going on several news programs and proudly declaring that he doesn’t know the law but suspects Ocasio-Cortez has broken it anyway by committing so-called “impedement,” which is not a word.

In the space created by Homan’s stupid question, he is essentially inviting the Department of Justice to invent a reason that he could go after a sitting congresswoman.

“I’m sure a free speech argument can be made. OK, she has every right to say anything she wants. When does it cross a line into aiding and abetting lawbreaking?” asked Fox News host Sean Hannity, simply parroting back everything Homan has been saying since last week. “Would it have to have direct involvement by her, in helping people to evade ICE?”

“That’s exactly the question I posed to the deputy attorney general,” Homan confirmed.

“I asked him to look into it. I says, I know, I know that through my career, someone steps in front of, between you and the person you’re arresting [inaudible], yeah that’s a violation. But at what point do you cross a line on saying you’re educating people, versus, you’re teaching them on how to evade ICE arrest? So, I’ve asked that question to the Department of Justice for clear guidance, so I can share that with the officers of ICE.”

“So we’re looking for that clear direction so we can start taking action,” Homan added.

Homan also appeared on Newsmax’s Finerty, where he called Ocasio-Cortez “the dumbest congresswoman ever elected to Congress.” He suggested that she “does not want ICE to do the job that Congress has mandated them to do, and funds them to do.”

Ocasio-Cortez responded to Homan’s Finerty comments later Monday.

“This is why you fight these cowards. The moment you stand up to them, they crumble,” she wrote on X.

“Homan has nothing. The Fourth Amendment is clear and I am well within my duties to educate people of their rights,” Ocasio-Cortez continued. “He can threaten me with jail & call names all he wants. He’s got nothing else.”

The Fourth Amendment, which prevents unreasonable search and seizure, and requires law enforcement such as ICE to provide a warrant signed by a judge.

Homan’s pathetic press tour railing against Ocasio-Cortez is simple proof that the only reason that the government wouldn’t want you to know your rights is so that they can violate them. The Trump administration hopes that undocumented immigrants won’t know their Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights, so they can execute sweeping immigration raids with little resistance.

But to do so, the Trump administration would have to recategorize teaching the law as breaking it.

Donald Trump is arguing to the Supreme Court that they have already given him “unrestricted power” to fire people.

The White House’s acting solicitor general, Sarah M. Harris, cited the Supreme Court’s July decision giving the president near-total immunity in an appeal Sunday asking the high court to overturn a lower court order blocking Trump’s decision to fire the head of the Office of Special Counsel, Hampton Dellinger. The office is an independent agency whose mission is to safeguard whistleblowers in the government and to enforce some ethics laws.

In July, the Supreme Court ruled that “the President’s management of the executive branch requires him to have unrestricted power to remove them [agency heads] in their most important duties,” Harris said in her filing, arguing that the lower court’s order was “an unprecedented assault on the separation of powers that warrant[ed] immediate relief.”

“This court should not allow lower courts to seize executive power by dictating to the president how long he must continue employing an agency head against his will,” the filing states.

Was the president having “unrestricted power” the intention of the 6-3 Supreme Court majority when it ruled in Trump’s favor on presidential immunity last year? At the time, Trump was trying to skirt federal charges for allegedly mishandling classified documents and attempting to overturn the 2020 election results, an effort that ultimately paid off.

Now, this legal filing not only seeks to cement unlimited presidential power in firing employees, but also challenges Congress’s authority to limit the president’s mass purges. Trump’s efforts to overhaul the federal government would get a big boost if he gets a favorable ruling from his conservative friends on the Supreme Court. The question is whether they think a president should have those powers, or if they think the presidency needs some guardrails.

Thousands of protesters gathered at different cities across the country Monday to declare President’s Day as “No Kings Day,” in protest of the unlawful actions of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk to upend the federal government.

The swath of protests were organized by the 50501 Movement, a name which refers to 50 protests in 50 states on one day. The group, which originated on social media, previously planned a series of demonstrations that took place earlier this month in response to Musk and Trump’s early efforts to overhaul the federal government.

Since then, the fascist duo have only continued their plot to cut popular federal programs and launch mass firings of federal employees.

In Washington, D.C., thousands of people gathered around the reflecting pool beside the U.S. Capitol building. “Hey Congress, grow a spine!” they shouted, according to independent journalist Alejandro Alvarez.

Alvarez wrote that it was likely the largest demonstration to take place in the capital city since Trump was inaugurated last month.

Other protests took place across the country, from Augusta, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, to Sante Fe, New Mexico, to Orlando, Florida.

In New York City, a video from Freedom News TV showed thousands of protesters marching through lower Manhattan, cheering to “Stop the Coup!”

In Boston, Massachusetts, nearly 1,000 people marched through the below freezing temperatures shouting, “No Kings on President’s Day!”