Trump & Musk let 'uninformed and unqualified' DOGE officials slash USAID, whistleblower says - The Last Word - MS NOW
More than a year ago, former USAID global health official Nicholas Enrich warned in an internal memo that the Trump-Musk DOGE cuts to foreign aid would have deadly consequences, projecting surges in malaria and polio.
Enrich joins MS NOW's Lawrence O'Donnell to discuss his new book, "Into the Wood Chipper" and why he says the grim outcome of what occurred was "entirely predictable." - Aired on 04/14/2026.
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I know how Trump/Musk etc think. They think black people have “jeans” for “music” and “sports” and everything else is “DEI”.
In this worldview, I would have “jeans” for “professional mental case museum exhibit, parrot-cat-human hybrid mimic!”. Didn’t even make top 10 on my list of aspirations, which I didn’t really have (beyond vaguely “scientist”)and this might be an argument in favor of having such a list going forward.
Besides parrot-cat-human hybrids aren’t very reliably susceptible to pro-fascist trickery and affinities for underdogs and so on can show up in unpredictable ways. Or not. Probably why it is rarely an unpaid, non-profession of non-choice which can destroyed by the human annoyance of a choir of fell parrot-cat-hybrids devoid of any human personality beyond susceptibility to dickweeds. The fell hand of “Dudesy” at work in that para.
While their creepy, but slightly more hypocritical fellow travelers at Google and Facebook hijacked affirmative action to specifically poison the public’s mind against it by associating “wokeness” fraudulently with some of the most hated tech cos ever.
The human brain isn’t very rational and often just as people are pleasantly surprised to find easy reprieves from hatreds, people love the stress relief of freedom to hate. What else can explain the world out there.
The latter is a bitter pill that leads nowhere. The former needs tending like a very low maintenance sapling in order to grow into a tree whose shade only kicks out a few creeps, sleazebags, jerks and such..
Anyway, this is pretty much the shittiest thing they did. I can’t feel it entirely because my brain is mostly combating a horrible machinic whine quite possibly or not (not knowing is part of the fun!)
For the last several decades, federal jobs helped Black workers find stable work with guardrails to prevent bias, but mass cuts are threatening decades of upward mobility.
When Francine Verdine took a job as a clerk at the Internal Revenue Service in Houston in 1983, it was supposed to be a stopgap until something better came along. She didn’t expect that 42 years later, she would look back on it as the start of a rewarding career that provided growth in various management positions, upward mobility and the opportunity to build a comfortable life for her family.
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“I enjoyed my career,” said Verdine, who retired in 2019. “I had no idea when I started that I could make the money I did by the time I left. It’s sad that many others’ opportunity to have a similar career could be over.”
For decades, the federal government provided both reliable jobs and guardrails to offset systemic racial bias in hiring and promotions, offering an alternative for Black workers who might be overlooked or ignored in the private sector. They played a crucial role in helping Black workers like Verdine join the middle class and thrive. But vast cuts by the Trump administration, led by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, are threatening to close down that once-dependable path to financial stability.
The government, which has about 3 million employees, is the largest employer in the country. At least 75,000 of them accepted buyout offers and thousands were fired in the last several weeks. Many of the workers fired were either newer hires or told they were let go for subpar performance.
“The federal workforce was a means to help build Black middle class. It hired Black Americans at a higher rate than private employers,” said Sheria Smith, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents the Education Department employees.
As a part of his efforts, President Trump is angling to shut down the Department of Education, a move that will have dramatic repercussions around the country. Nearly 30% of Education employees are Black according to a 2024 report by the department.
Smith said 74 workers at the department had been let go so far, 60 of whom are Black.
At the Department of Health and Human Services, where more than 1,300 new hires were reportedly laid off, 20% of the staff was Black. And at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which recently lost 1,000 employees, 24% are Black.
Jokes aside that was a really shitty thing to do.
I don’t know if you follow Christopher Ketcham Rhiannon. He is one of my favorite environmental journalists, just as Yasha Levine is my other favorite journalist.
My entire internet feed is an increasingly possibly at least subtly vandalized social experiment. I wonder what gets across.
The one plus is that the net is not entirely ruined for communication whether it is repellant ai refusing to stfu, once humans can guage humans adequately from fairly little info.
Trump broke my human guaging abilities. He is too extreme to induce much but hopelessness until now when there is no way Trumpism will survive but who or what else is collateral damage remains to be seen. So tired of being that. Mitt Romney was detestable. Trump lies so outside anything sane..It is a futile attempt but no one told the Idiocracy that there are greater fears humans have than of looking ridiculous, such as what happens if you make someone truly scary look ridiculous.
I think the danger is past in my network. But unpleasant still.
Since when is skin color a determination of anything, ability or human worth?? I realize now that I mostly grew up in a fairly diverse community from 4th grade on. But nobody mentioned it, not my teachers nor my parents and certainly not my grandmother who I was particularly close to. And how was I supposed to know, the kids in my classes weren't black or white like chess pieces, there were red haired kids with freckles and every skin color, darker or paler.
I mention my grandmother for one reason, she told me when I was a little older that she was given a hard time by a neighbor for her lack of prejudice. She had 4 children and was widowed early, my Dad who was the eldest boy was only 12 and his youngest brother was only 3. And my grandmother told me that her neighbor said to her, "Hazel, one of your children is going to grow up and marry an Eskimo!" I guess that was the minorist minority that this lady could think of! 
And my grandmother also told me that when she was young, born before women even had the vote, that girls of her day had two main choices, becoming a teacher or a nurse, so of course she became a teacher and her first teaching job was in a one-room school where some of her students were older than she was. But she told me once that if she was born now, she'd like to become an environmentalist. That's sure something, especially now, that I could support! 
I remember your mentioning your grandmom was a schoolteacher who wanted to be an environmentalist.
I am engaged in a battle with machines and stupid humans and have been a “slow learner” because of the insidiousness with which machines fuck you over.
It would be one thing if it was vanity, greed..all the shittiest human behavior. Or even loneliness/
I am a solitary woman who is not very happy except when alone for long durations. You know.
But they also exploit things that: a) are not crass like political engagement, a wish to support journalists or writers or activists you support and b) self-interested political engagement, but not gross self-interest like I want this or that. But I want and need a functioning society not being a crazy person. That is the activism that made the parts of society that I use work:
But without any actual issues, I have been very distrait for years trying to make sense of stuff that makes no sense. You cannot stop brain from trying to solve stuff on autopilot.
But finally today it has clicked for me the way it used to work on autopilot. And if I memorize it now I won’t forget.
One real left-right asymmetry is the left has fewer naifs or grifters. And all the people I follow- EarlG/DU/people like you and the rest lf MIRT, Ed Zitron, Yasha Levine who has driven it home as much as he can and Christopher Ketcham who is awesome is that they get how that works for the left-support or conflict (because ai or the most grotesque attention seekers I see locally, there is no way around conflict) or even pretty much the only famous people I don’t find scary, Stewart and Colbert (and I like Bill Maher and Ricky Gervais, neither of whom are in the Epstein Files, unlike Noam Chomsky), while non of the people I support or back are rich or famous, they have this like anti-grift, degrow junk quality that registers if you are a glum introvert who wants to get to your priorities while preserving your place as a complainant.
When I was pretty zombified I handed over so much money to Substack and while I liked the writers I supported (especially Yasha Levine), I can see in disgust now that, that was some perverted “marketplace mediated democracy”. Such bullshit.
I am not gullible or out of it. But I give up around large crowds. Oh yeah Lucien Greaves and the Freedom From Religion Foundation are also awesome and many others.
But I think I have achieved tbe metaphorical equivalent of an animal chewing a limb off to escape a trap.
My brain has slowly been coming alive thankfully.
Off go I.
I will be back some day. I didn’t want to disappear without a word. You guys are so sweet. Lots of people are nice, but human nature..
It is not horrible people often. It is worth understanding i suppose that people aren’t invisible in communities out of callousness and so on.
It is the limits of free will. Some people cannot be truly social and they participate in society in other ways still.
It is not true that very asocial people are obviously asocial or hate people. They can even like people. But it is that it drains asocial people to lose the normal non awkward asocial person’s mask. It is not depression. It is introversion.
Oh well.. Off go I!
See you guys later. Thank you.