☕️ DISCIPLINED ☙ Thursday, January 23, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Outrage and more outrage; deep-state swamp keeps on draining; bloated public health agencies muzzled; to recess or not to recess; Laken Riley Act changes the immigration game; fake news; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! And, only three days in, the historic Trump first week continues steamrolling ahead. Today’s roundup includes: more incoherent outrage ensues over more deep-state draining; federal health agencies are in talking time out after Trump’s HHS deputy director straps a mask on them; Trump and Senate wrangle over recess appointments and slow confirmation hearings; Laken Riley Act, a game changer for immigration law, heads to Trump’s desk; fake news stories start up again and I start shooting them down; and something bad approaches the tender feelings of the World Economic Forum.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

🔥🔥🔥

In a sign, perhaps, of how badly Trump has discombobulated the corporate media, the major platforms finally began reporting the profound challenged to the federal workforce—two lazy days after the fact. Yesterday, CNN ran its story, headlined “Trump targets DEI and civil service protections, striking fear in some federal workers.” It was even more swamp draining.

This term, Trump 2.0 appears laser-focused on draining the swamp, possibly recognizing that a dried-out swamp will create a pathway to all the other goals on his agenda. Yesterday, I reported at length about Trump’s anti-DEI fusillade, which required federal DEI staff not already smuggled out of their departments to be placed on administrative leave as of 5pm yesterday afternoon.

But maybe even more significantly, on Monday, Trump signed another employment order creating a whole new category of federal employees called “Schedule F.”

It’s an idea he came up with too late in 2020, when he first signed the new schedule into existance. But he just couldn’t get it into the end zone past all the defensive litigation before his first term expired. Then, Joe Biden immediately reversed the order. For reasons incomprehensible to normal people, federal workers enjoy job protection far beyond anything available to workers in the private sector.

Most of us in the private sector are considered “at will” employees who can be fired for any reason or no reason at all.

Manager doesn’t like you? Fired. Too many customers complaining about your nose ring? Fired. Asked too many stupid questions? Fired. Won’t work weekends? Fired. Talk too much? Also fired. In fact, the right to fire employees is so broad that the exceptions prove the rule. The only things employers can’t fire at-will workers for are their race, sex, age, and a small handful of other protected characteristics. Anything else is fair game.

But federal employees, who apparently occupy a higher, better tier of employment than we do, can’t be fired until a slow-moving termination review committee double-checks their supervisor’s decision to fire them. If the committee disagrees, then tough noogies. But Schedule F creates a special “at will” category, a first in the federal workforce, and that terrifies some federal employees.

For some, meaning the partisans, the thought of working under the same rules as the rest of Americans is just too much.

I’ll explain how it works, since corporate media stories ignore this part, even though it is straightforward. The new category, Schedule F, would apply only to federal employees in “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating” positions. Agencies must identify those politically-sensitive positions —positions, not employees— and reclassify those positions as Schedule F.

Then, employees occupying those positions would slide down to our employment tier, enjoying the same rules and protections as all other Americans who work at-will, which as I said, is most of us.

But that’s not good enough for one political party in particular. You guessed it: Democrats. Lawsuits, prepared long in advance, have already been filed. Democrats could care less about worker’s rights when it involves mandatory experimental vaccines. Vaccinate or terminate! But supposedly, they are now suddenly champions of workers’ rights. Uh huh.

Hilariously, CNN’s story, as with the rest of corporate media, repeatedly refers to the entrenched bureaucracy as “apolitical.” This old canard, long used to defend insane federal job protections, conjured an image of a purified class of hardworking civil servants who stayed so far out of politics they refused to even watch CNN, lest they accidentally give some taxpayer somewhere the wrong idea.

Paging Lois Lerner.

That used to work. But then Trump came, and we saw the rise of The Resistance. We witnessed FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, two adulterers tweeting about anti-Trump insurance policies — 🎼like a good neighbor, Peter is there. We witnessed all-federal-worker juries in the January 6th trials accomplishing a historic, never-seen-before 100% conviction rate. We watched Alexander Vindman arrogantly leaking parts of a confidential Trump call with Zelensky, leading to Trump’s first impeachment and no consequences for Vindman.

We have learned the “apolitical workforce” line is a laughable fantasy, a mere convenient fiction. Before Trump 1.0, the “apolitical” argument was liberally applied to safeguard federal workers’ “rights.” But we’re not buying it anymore. There are probably some good federal workers who keep their heads down and stay out of politics —probably many— but the bad ones have proven the president needs a way to prune the rotten branches more quickly than the current glacial process, where most challenged employees comfortably retire long before their review and appeal options expire.

But today the federal workforce is reeling. So far this week, Trump has hit them six ways from Sunday, to quote Chuck Schumer. He’s ordered them back to full-time, in-person office work. He’s reinstated his 2020 Schedule F scheme. And he’s pulled the plug on DEI.

To say the deep state is playing on defense is a terrific understatement. He’s coming at them from every direction. They’re surrounded.

And it’s not just federal workers in a general sense, or even specifically DEI teams. Yesterday, the President aimed his pruning laser at the big health agencies. They’re screaming for sympathy, but: We. Don’t. Care.

🔥🔥🔥

Speaking of sold-out, politicized federal workers—nobody saw this coming. It took all the so-called “science experts” by surprise. And now they are as nervous OnlyFans influencers in church. About mid-day yesterday, the Daily Mail ran the fascinating story under the headline, “Trump orders 'blackout' at CDC, FDA, NIH as agencies prepare for MAGA bloodbath.” A MAGA bloodbath! Hopefully the CDC doctors will issue guidelines for treating that condition. First, place mask on face…

On Tuesday morning, Stefanie Spear, HHS’s newly hired deputy chief of staff and longtime Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ally, arrived at the office and promptly ordered the three big health agencies (CDC, FDA, NIH) to pull the plug on all external communications. The ban included regular CDC reports, like the bird flu running totals, press releases, published studies, and specific actions like grant approvals.

By cutting off their external voice, Spear put the agencies in a Daniel Penny-style chokehold. They can’t spin a narrative, signal for help, or plead their case to the public. It was like duct-taping their mouths shut while simultaneously handing them a performance review clipboard.

Bloodbath.

By banning their external communications, the Trump Administration is sending a clear, humiliating internal message: We’re in charge now. For the agencies’ arrogant whitecoats accustomed to wielding massive “expert” influence with virtually no oversight or accountability, it’s like being sent back to kindergarten. A strict kindergarten. Remedial kindergarten.

No talking without raising your hand!

Presumably, the officials who are terrified were hoping for Biden pardons and didn’t get them.

Speaking of arrogant whitecoats, Dr. Lucky Tran, who the Daily Mail described as “a Democrat-leaning science communicator at Columbia University,” blasted the order as “the beginning of censorship.” Outrage! And more outrage! And then there were even more overwrought headlines like this one, from McKnight’s:

Crippling! Hopefully the effects will be crippling, but that is probably too much to ask for. There’s another crippling condition for which they need CDC guidance. Bureaucrat, heal thyself.

The Administration played it cool. Stephanie Spear told CBS simply, "HHS has paused mass communications and public appearances that are not directly related to emergencies or critical to preserving health. This is a short pause to allow the new team to set up a process for review and prioritization.”

Maybe. But President Trump singled out the public health agencies in his inaugural address, accurately observing they “do not deliver in times of disaster,” referring obviously to the covid disaster and how badly the agencies handled that — if not caused it to start with.

So this pause, however long or short, isn’t just about communication bans or grant freezes; it’s a recalibration of power, the restoration of a basic chain of accountability, a rebuilding of trust in agencies nobody trusts anymore. For far too long, the CDC, FDA, and NIH have acted like they were the only adults in the room, swanking their emergency health powers into our living rooms, telling everybody else what to do while ignoring their own rules, all the while totally untouchable by any political oversight because pandemic.

Now, they’re being reminded they’re part of a system with a chain of command that ultimately answers to the voters—and nothing terrifies bureaucratic termites more than that. That’s why these silly wannabe martyrs are hopelessly overreacting with bloodbaths and crippling censorship.

The CDC, whose director must be confirmed by the Senate, remains directorless. Which brings us to the slow-motion confirmations.

🔥🔥🔥

Politico ran a related story yesterday headlined, “No recess till Trump gets his Cabinet, top GOP senators say.” So far, the Republican-controlled Senate has confirmed only one Cabinet post: Marco Rubio as Secretary of State (Pam Bondi as Attorney General held up for another 7 days by Democrat maneuvers), and that’s it.

Trump wants his Cabinet confirmed now. Senate Democrats keep asking for more hearings and hearing times and doing whatever they can to slow things down.

Despite Democrats’ successful delay tactics, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has so far refused to consider adjourning to let Trump make recess appointments. (Thune’s DC number is (866) 850-3855, just saying.) Instead, Majority Leader Thune has vowed to work even harder by adding evening and weekend hours to the Senate schedule “until all Trump’s nominees have been confirmed.”

On Tuesday, in a tense meeting between Trump, Thune, and Speaker Johnson, Trump asked again about recess appointments. “Our goal is to get them confirmed here on the floor of the United States Senate,” the Republican Senator replied.

Trump has not forgotten that, in 2017, Democrats successfully delayed his nominees for months, with the final one remaining unconfirmed until late April.

The politics are, as usual, complicated. It’s easy to say just recess already. But there are always pro’s and con’s.

The Senate needs to protect its historic confirmation power, which is important even —or maybe especially— when a party is out of power. Thune could recess anytime, but his best option is to quickly confirm Trump’s nominees, even if that takes a little longer than a recess appointment process would.

But Democrats also know that’s what Thune wants to do, and they aim to stop him. Their best option is to slow down the process just enough to deprive Thune of the political cover he needs to safely declare a recess without losing too much political capital for caving to Presidential pressure. On the other hand, if the Democrats delay too much, Thune can safely order a recess, out of necessity.

Bottom line, we are only on Day Four. The political dance must continue a little longer to see whether Senate Republicans can get in step.

🔥🔥🔥

The Washington Post ran a very encouraging story yesterday headlined, “House passes Laken Riley Act as Trump begins immigration crackdown.” The Act has passed both chambers and is heading to President Trump’s desk for signature. The new law will pour jet fuel into Trump’s deportation plan and will help prevent another Biden-style border disaster.

As I reported on earlier this week, the Act has two main parts. The first part expands ICE’s power to detain illegals without bond whever they’ve been arrested or charged with any crime, like shoplifting, rather than requiring officials to wait for a felony conviction.

The common-sense idea is to stop criminally minded illegals before they escalate to more serious crimes.

The Act’s second and even better part gives State Attorneys General standing to sue the federal government for any non-enforcement of immigration law — closing a loophole the Biden Administration successfully used to argue States lacked standing to complain about Biden ignoring whatever federal immigration laws he didn’t like.

The bill, which sat stymied last year in the Democrat-controlled Senate, passed this time with bipartisan support, even though Republicans shot down all the Democrats’ proposed amendments.

Tellingly, WaPo ended its article quoting Ezra Levin, director of an opaque NGO called the “Indivisible Project,” who explained, “The only hope for MAGA’s corrupt, chaotic, and unconstitutional agenda is a fast legislative process that moves before public opposition can build.” Meaning, before Democrats can publish their narratives. That quote along explains most of the Democrat playbook. “Dems shouldn’t give it to them,” Levin encouraged.

In other words, the Democrats’ goal is to delay, delay, delay, and tie up President Trump’s agenda for two years until the mid-terms.

🔥🔥🔥

Yesterday, an outraged Guardian ran a frantic “somebody said something” story headlined, “Trump suggests it was a mistake for Biden not to pardon himself.” Apparently, corporate media has switched itself back to the “government watchdog” setting and is getting up to its Trump 1.0 tricks. Let’s take a closer look at this story to learn more about how fake news works.

The real story should have been about how Trump is already giving media interviews —in this case, with Fox’s Sean Hannity— whereas Joe Biden only gave about two interviews in four years, both of which were heavily stage-managed. Instead of noticing that remarkable contrast between the two presidents, the Guardian cherry-picked an inflammatory but meaningless statement to report as “news.”

Media scraped up more outrage over what Trump told Sean about Joe Biden: “This guy went around giving everybody pardons. And you know, the funny thing, maybe the sad thing, is he didn’t give himself a pardon. And if you look at it, it all had to do with him.”

The Guardian’s clear implication was that Trump slyly threatened to prosecute Joe—even though he never said that. You have to read Trump’s mind, like the Guardian, or Kreskin. Just like you have to read Elon Musk’s mind to discover his true Nazi sympathies.

The truth was, in context, Trump’s remark was completely unremarkable. The two men were talking about Trump, who declined to pardon himself when he left office in 2021. In hindsight, it would have spared him a great deal of inconvenience. But he didn’t know that at the time. Just riffing, Trump added, “Joe Biden has very bad advisers. Somebody advised Joe Biden to give pardons to everybody but him.”

In other words, Trump was being mildy sympathetic. It’s true that he was also pointing out that the one cabbage who masterminded the Crime Family Business was the only cabbage that didn’t get a pardon. So he could still be made into prosecutorial slaw, if he doesn’t die first.

But that clearly wasn’t Trump’s main point. So the Guardian spinning his comment into any kind of threat was just a fabricated, motive-imputing narrative.

🔥 This story illustrates a cheap type of fake news that I call “somebody said something.” In other words, there’s no news about something happening, like a bill being signed, or a meeting taking place, or a declaration of war or even peace. Words can sometimes have meaning, like real threats, or interesting opinions that someone powerful holds.

But this type of story is just about something the media thinks will make some group angry. And it’s almost always a short soundbite, usually taken out of context, devoid of explanation, and requiring readers to assume bad motives.

Perhaps the best (or worst) example was the “fine people” hoax, when media widely reported that, after the Charlottesville terrorist attack, Trump said there were “fine people on both sides” — even though a loud group of Neo-nazis had attended the event. The media’s false implication was that Trump was endorsing Neo-nazism —he did a Nazi salute!— even though Trump expressly condemned the Neo-nazis in a different part of his speech. Which, of course, the media didn’t mention, since it negated the entire motive-imputing pretext.

Boy, are they literally obsessed with Nazis, or what? Are swastikas all they dream about? But I digress.

The first two words of yesterday’s Guardian headline were a perfect example of the red flag that gives away this type of fake news: “Trump suggests…” The Guardian’s headline didn’t even claim Trump said something; he only suggested it. That’s the whole story! Trump suggesting something. So dumb.

This is not news; it’s propaganda. And in this “somebody said something” case, it was bad propaganda. Which, as the Charlottesville example proves, doesn’t mean they won’t chew the fake news bone until it dissolves into chalk.

🔥 A little later this morning at 11am, Trump will deliver his first major speech to international leaders in an address to … the World Economic Forum. Nobody knows what Trump plans to say, but everyone seems to think it will be lit.

CLIP: Javier Milei roasts the WEF ( 0:51).

Yesterday, the WEF heard from Argentina’s fiery, chainsaw-wielding president Javier Milei, who rubbed the WEF’s globalist face in Trump’s election, called socialist an “infection,” and announced “Davos has begun to crumble.” He also called extreme LGBT activists “child abusers,” “groomers,” and “pedophiles.”

Now they’ve invited President Trump to speak. After Milei, and after Trump’s Inauguration speech (with Biden sitting right there), Davos seems to be in self-destruct mode.

Milei set the stage. Now Trump can deliver some hard truths to the Davos crowd. I can’t wait.

Have a tremendous Thursday! I’m definitely not tired of winning yet, so we’ll regroup tomorrow to find out what Trump told the WEF and catch up on all the other essential news and commentary. See you then.

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

How to Donate to Coffee & Covid

Twitter: jchilders98.
Truth Social: jchilders98.
MeWe: mewe.com/i/coffee_and_covid.
Telegram: t.me/coffeecovidnews
C&C Swag! www.shopcoffeeandcovid.com