Mainstream media apoplectic that Trump is doing things he promised: "President [Donald] Trump's administration deepened its pressure campaign on government employees to resign before a Thursday deadline, rattling and angering a civil service steeling itself for a prolonged battle with Elon Musk and his ongoing foray into the federal bureaucracy," reads a New York Times lede on the buyouts. The deadline is today, when federal employees may decide to voluntarily leave and be paid through September 30.
"Trump's gut-it-all plan for D.C.'s 'Deep State,'" reads an Axios headline, noting that "Trump promised during his campaign to root out the 'Deep State'—generally framed as institutional resistance in D.C. that impedes his agenda," and lamenting that "the speed and tactics of Trump's vengeance-fueled cost-cutting efforts have been surprising." A longer, more alarmist Politico feature posits that "the widespread political purges of the early 1950s echo clearly today" and that "seventy years ago, the reasonable pretext of hunting Soviet agents opened the way to a yearslong, paranoid campaign, motivated by outlandish conspiracy theories, that destroyed countless careers but did nothing to improve America's security."
Meanwhile, Wired is attempting to drum up opposition for the team of young and talented engineers Musk has hired to help him cull the federal government computer systems of waste and inefficiency. Note the deference to "experts" here:
