Trump Illegally Fires Thousands, Unions Vow War – The Monday AM Quickie 10/13/25
Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day to one and all. - Whitney
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THE BIG NEWS
Hamas Releases All Living Israeli Hostages
The New York Times reports that early this morning, "Hamas released the last 20 living hostages from Gaza and Israel began releasing nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners as part of a cease-fire deal"; more on this in the days to come.
Trump Illegally Fires Thousands, Unions Vow War
The largest federal workers union vowed to fight Trump’s illegal layoff of thousands of workers Friday night, calling it an unprecedented abuse of power and promising to keep fighting “until every reduction-in-force notice is rescinded,” American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley said in a press statement. The AFGE and other federal worker unions filed a lawsuit in a California federal court to prevent Trump from following through on his layoff threats, which he has made since the beginning of his second term; the unions asked a judge Friday to immediately halt them now that they’ve begun, CNN reported.
The layoffs forced more than 4,000 people from their jobs at the departments of Commerce, Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and Treasury, according to Federal News Network. Trump hit the latter two the hardest, with more than 1,000 layoffs each. He fired around 500 people at the Department of Education, including nearly every single person in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, USA Today reported. “The rumored near elimination of the Office for Special Education Programs is absolutely devastating to the education of people with disabilities,” Chad Rummel, executive director of the Council for Exceptional Children, told K-12 Dive on Saturday. Trump also cut workers from the US Patent and Trademark Office and plans to cut them from the Environmental Protection Agency but won’t say exactly how many or when. On Sunday, James David Vance, the fake povvo who had golf lessons as a child, went to Yale, once founded a venture capital firm with money from Peter Thiel, and who unfortunately is now the vice president, said the regime would fire even more people to make the shutdown “painful.”
The layoffs come as an estimated 750,000 workers are furloughed because the GOP decided to shut down the government rather than negotiate with Democrats to restore some healthcare cuts. Trump last week suggested workers won’t get backpay, even though they are legally guaranteed it; on Saturday he claimed “he had found a way” to pay members of the military, according to The Guardian, but did not say where the appropriation was coming from. Meanwhile, Military.com reports that food bank visits by military families have jumped 30 percent since the shutdown started.
MORE STORIES TO WATCH
Young Adults Dying at Higher Rate Than Rest of Population, Especially in North America
Authors of the Global Burden of Disease study yesterday warned that the rise in deaths among young adults by drugs, alcohol, injury and suicide represented an “emerging crisis.” The situation in North America is especially dire, they said as they presented their findings to the World Health Summit in Berlin, and is “very tied up with the rise of anxiety and depression in young people, particularly women.” There is “considerable debate” about the causes, Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington’s school of medicine, told The Guardian. “Is this social media? Is this [electronic] devices? Is this broader social trends on parenting? We know it was made worse by Covid. So there’s a lot of controversy, I’d say, in the psychiatric epidemiology and general social commentary about the causes around mental health. And so that’s a problem for coming up with solutions.”
Paramilitary Kills Scores of Starving Sudanese in Drone Strikes
The paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces slammed bombs onto a shelter for displaced people in Sudan late Friday, killing at least 57 people, according to Al Jazeera and the BBC. The RSF attacked the Dar al-Arqam shelter in El Fasher, the last major city controlled by the government-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces; the United Nations estimates that about 250,000 civilians are trapped there. “Children, women and the elderly were killed in cold blood, and many were completely burned,” said the El Fasher Resistance Committee, a group of local activists. “The situation has gone beyond disaster and genocide inside the city, and the world remains silent.” The group called the attack a “massacre” and called for international intervention. Per Al Jazeera: “The attack represents the latest in an intensifying pattern of strikes on civilian areas in the city, with the brutal civil war now well into its third year. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights documented at least 53 civilians killed between October 5-8 alone in attacks across el-Fasher locality, with women and children among the dead.”
QUICKEST QUICKIES
- No Survivors in Deadly Tennessee Explosives Factory Disaster All sixteen people at the Accurate Energetic Systems plant died when it blew up Friday, a blast that was “so powerful that it leveled a building in the complex and, for residents over a dozen miles away, the explosion felt like it had happened just outside their homes. The immediate aftermath was a fiery stretch of mangled metal and debris from the destroyed building and the scorched remains of vehicles that had been parked outside.” via the NYT.
- Landslides, Floods Kill 37 in Mexico, Including at Least One Child The heavy, incessant rain brought by tropical storms Priscilla and Raymond hit central and southeastern parts of the country, isolating communities, damaging homes, and knocking out power for 320,000. via the AP.
- Bias Advisor for Zuckerberg’s Meta Artificial Intelligence is an ‘Anti-DEI Agitator’ and Disinformation Peddler 36-year-old Robby Starbuck got the position via a lawsuit settlement, not by, say, merit; since he arrived, he’s “baselessly claimed that individual shooters in the US were motivated by leftist ideology, described faith-based protest groups as communists, and without evidence tied Democratic lawmakers to murders.” via The Guardian.
- Portland Counters Trump’s Force With ‘Operation Inflation’ “The absurdity of adults dancing in inflatable costumes during anti-ICE demonstrations is meant to display community joy, protesters say, and helps to dispel the Trump administration’s narrative that Portland is a crime-ridden ‘war zone,’ a characterization local and state leaders say is false.” (It is actually false). via NBC News.
SOME NUMBER
800
That’s roughly how many times Elon Musk’s Boring Company has violated environmental regulations in Las Vegas as it builds a giant tunnel system beneath the city, regulators say, according to ProPublica. The state could have fined Musk’s company $3 million but decided on $242,800, even though Musk is the richest person on the planet and will never face hardship, at least not the way things are going. The state’s tally of Musk’s violations includes: “starting to dig without approval, releasing untreated water onto city streets and spilling muck from its trucks.”
ON THE SHOW TODAY
10/13: Today’s show will re-air an interview from last October with Peter D’Errico, who discussed how the Pope enabled “legal” theft of indigenous land.
DON'T MISS MR CLIPS
Disgraced MAGA School Chief Gets Worse
PragerU schlock would be funny except people believe it.
Protester Brilliantly Trolls ICE With Amazing Dulcet Tones
Hit em with it (the theatre of the absurd).
PARTING WORDS
“Honestly, I lived in fear for every second, especially after hearing what the Israeli occupation was saying about me. I was living life second to second, not knowing what the next second would bring.”
-- Journalist Saleh Aljafarawi, speaking to Al Jazeera in January before a temporary ceasefire. Militia members affiliated with Israel murdered him yesterday as he reported on fighting in Gaza City just days after the allegedly permanent ceasefire was announced. He was 28. Israeli forces repeatedly threatened Aljafarawi as he reported tirelessly on their genocide, as they have done to many of the other 270-some media workers they’ve killed over the last two years. I will remember Aljafarawi’s for his brave reporting and his heartfelt video messages on social media, which reflected so much optimism and strength despite the hell he was living through. May he rest in peace.
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