by dap | Jan 15, 2025 | Daily Signal
As taxpayers have spent billions to pay for mostly vacant federal office space,
administration worked with federal employee unions to lock in telework levels to help “Trump-proof” agencies, according to a congressional investigation.
The
released a report Wednesday morning ahead of a hearing titled, “The Stay-at-Home Federal Workforce: Another Biden-Harris Legacy.”
“Biden-Harris administration officials worked with federal labor union allies not only to lock in high telework levels, but to undermine the ability of the incoming Trump administration to unlock them, and to manage its own workforce,” the report says.
has called for reform on several fronts for federal employees.
While the federal government initially allowed telework during the
, the Biden administration kept the policies in place well after the emergency measures expired.
“The Biden-Harris administration not only failed to bring federal employees back to the office, it made it difficult for the incoming administration to do so, as part of a broader effort to ‘Trump-proof’ the federal government,” the report later adds.
The committee found that of all 438 federal agencies and sub-agencies, only the
monitored the effects of telework on the performance of employees.
The congressional report cites data from a July 2023 Government Accountability Office report that found 17 of 24 federal agency headquarter spaces in the Washington, D.C., area used about 25% or less of the capacity of the headquarters buildings. Some agencies used as little as 9% of their headquarter space.
“The federal government pays roughly $7 billion annually to lease and maintain office space for federal agencies,” the House report says. “In other words, the federal government is wasting billions in taxpayer dollars to pay for underutilized office space.”
It also notes that as offices were vacant, taxpayers were still spending $3.3 billion on new office furniture.
The report says that
employees are a notable failure.
“Nearly all of the 58,875 SSA employees are telework eligible, and those eligible employees have spent only 46.9 percent of their time in the office,” the report says. “This failure to show up runs parallel to failures at SSA in accomplishing its mission. SSA is charged with administering the Social Security retirement, survivors, and disability insurance programs.”
The report notes that while the SSA spent $1.6 trillion in fiscal year 2024, the agency’s disability determination processing times on average “have increased since fiscal year 2020.”
“Processing times have not returned to pre-pandemic levels,” the report adds.
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by dap | Jan 14, 2025 | Daily Signal
Republican senators highlighted a
to President-elect Donald Trump, citing a revealing new poll on the federal bureaucracy and urging Trump to be vigilant as he enters office next week.
The poll, which the firm RMG Research released Monday, revealed that 42% of what the survey calls “federal government managers”—federal employees who live in the National Capitol Region around Washington and earn at least $75,000 annually—plan to politically oppose the incoming administration.
Nearly two-thirds (64%) of the federal government managers who voted for Vice President Kamala Harris in November said they would ignore a lawful order from Trump if they considered it to be bad policy. Only 17% of the Harris voters in the federal bureaucracy said they would follow Trump’s order.
“Bureaucracy is the real threat to democracy,” Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa,
in an emailed statement Wednesday. Ernst leads the Senate DOGE Caucus, an effort to help the DOGE, or Department of Government Efficiency, a nongovernmental panel led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and aimed at rooting out waste and abuse in the federal government. Conservatives often warn that insulating federal bureaucrats from Congress and the president weaken the voters’ ability to have a say in their government.
“The bureaucrat class has forgotten that their job is to serve the American people, and I am happy to help remind them,” Ernst added. “As the Senate DOGE Caucus Chair, I am rooting out the rot in Washington. Federal employees are paid by taxpayers to work for taxpayers. They can either do their job or find another.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, noted
to tie the incoming president’s hands.
“Entrenched bureaucrats are already subverting President Trump’s agenda and working to box in the incoming administration and Republican Congress, including and especially on foreign policy,” Cruz told The Daily Signal. “President Trump and administration officials are going to have to focus immediately on ensuring such bureaucrats are fired.”
Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., condemned the deep state effort as “shameful” and endorsed some policies to combat it.
“This polling data is shameful—civil servants must serve our nation, not their political party,” she told The Daily Signal. “The administrative state is a huge problem that demands serious reforms.”
Reining in the Bureaucracy
Britt named a few pieces of
to rein in the bureaucracy, such as the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act and changes to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has a
to insulate it from Congress’ authority.
“I’m committed to restoring power to the American people and ending unelected bureaucrats’ red tape regime,” she said. “That’s why I proudly support
and efforts to make the CFPB subject to the congressional appropriations process.” (Britt, Cruz, and Ernst
in 2023.)
“I am confident that the nominees and appointees President Trump has selected will help get the federal government back to doing the work of the American people rather than the entrenched bureaucracy,” Britt added. “I look forward to getting President Trump’s cabinet confirmed quickly and working with his administration to advance the ‘America First’ agenda.”
The poll also found that Republicans who work in Washington federal offices are more likely to support Trump. Republican federal government managers proved more likely to say (74%) a bureaucrat should be fired for refusing a presidential order, while only 23% of Democratic managers agreed.
RMG Research surveyed 500 federal government managers between Dec. 9 and Dec. 23. The margin of error for this poll is plus or minus 4.4%.
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by dap | Jan 14, 2025 | Daily Signal
Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from noted historian and Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson.
Hello. This is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.
I want to talk today very briefly about the matter of
trolling. I’m kind of smiling, because a lot of people don’t know what to make of it.
It concerns four topics: Renaming the Gulf of
to the Gulf of America; assuming control of Greenland, or buying it, I should say; renegotiating the Panama Canal Treaty, with the idea that either they reform, the Panamanians, or we take acquisition of it; and then, of course, making Canada a particular state.
The traditional exegesis of all of these is that he’s trolling, and in reference to that, go back to “The Art of the Deal,” a ghostwritten book; “The Art of the Comeback,” etc. “The Art of the Deal 2”; and in that Trump exegesis, he says, when you go into a room to negotiate, you just seem wild and demand 100%, and then through the negotiation, the other party starts to make demands on you reciprocally.
And then, finally, you feel like you’ve been put upon, and you walk out of the room with a 55% or 60% advantage, and then you never make fun of the person. You praise them.
We’ve seen it with
in the first Trump term. And under that logic, Donald Trump is telling
, well, you don’t spend any money to defend yourself, so to speak. You’re under the American nuclear umbrella, and the trade imbalance is not fair, because you have tariffs on our goods that we don’t have on yours.
And yet, you won’t patrol the border when you know the drugs and people are coming illegally into the United States. Blah, blah, blah. So, we are going to demand something from you—make you the next state. And there are—it’s very effective, because provinces like Ontario are very energy-rich and very conservative, and maybe some would like to join the United States.
So, it causes a lot of dissension. It may have led to [Canadian Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau finally throwing in the towel. The next example is, of course, Greenland, this huge country, a semiautonomous province of Denmark, three or four times the size of Texas. Key to American security in World War II.
Trump says he wants to buy it. He said it before. They said, what are you doing? And in “Art of the Deal” fashion, of course, now Denmark is spending an extra billion-plus dollars of investment in this huge colony. And on their royal coat of arms are including Greenland imagery.
And so, according to this logic, they are now pushing back, and Trump is going to be better off than when he started, as in the case of Canada, when they started to patrol the border, and they clamped down on drugs, and they said they renegotiate any asymmetrical tariffs.
In the case of renaming the Gulf of Mexico, the Mexican president showed a map recently of the southwest of the United States being part of Mexico. That was her counter.
That’s kind of a bad troll, because they rely on $63 billion of remittances. That’s their, remember, it’s their largest source of foreign exchange. So, I don’t think she should troll Trump. But the idea was that it was a message to Mexico that you have an imbalance. You’re sending people here illegally, 12 million in the last four years. You get remittances, $63 billion. 80,000 Americans have died per year, fentanyl. You won’t control it. So, we’re going to start to reexamine our entire message.
So, in the case of the Panama Canal: It’s similar to Greenland and Canada and the Gulf of Mexico controversies. The
have intruded into an American domain. We built the canal. We operated it effectively for one century. And Panama is now flirting with Chinese capital in a way that hurts our national interest because China’s interest in the Panama Canal in times of crisis would be to shut it down and prevent our fleets from redeploying, either east or west. We, we all know that.
And so, under “Art of the Deal” with all of these controversies—Panama, Greenland, Canada, the Gulf of Mexico—you get boisterous, you get excessive, you seem unstable, and then the other party negotiates down in reasonable fashion, and you end up better [off.]
I’d just like to finish, though, there is one key element missing: Irony. Irony.
So, Donald Trump is saying to the Mexican government: If you look at the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico, 1,700 miles are U. S. coastline; 1,700 miles are Mexican coastline. Why is it called the Gulf of Mexico? But here’s the key, and we are in an age of left-wing renaming things.
We topple statues. We rename iconic buildings. We take away Woodrow Wilson. We do everything. And according to your logic, it’s time that you had the Gulf of Mexico for centuries, but we have the exact amount of coastline that you do. And we now are a convert for your idea of renaming things. In the case of Greenland, you Europeans are anti-colonialists.
You’re always giving us lectures. This is a colony. New York City is closer to Greenland than is Copenhagen. And we defend it. And it’s a North American territory. So, do you still want to play the imperial colonialist because you only react to your colonial people when you’re pressured, and you’re endangering them.
He’s trying to tip the left-wing argument from Denmark: Oh, the United States is a bully, upside-down. That you’re the bully, you’re the colonialist. In the case of Canada, it’s the same thing. You don’t want us to intrude, but you want freebies. You want us to defend you while you pose as you’re an anti-militaristic, left-wing, pacifistic, utopian society.
But if you examine things, you would be scared to death about Chinese and Russian intrusion into your airspace or sea space, if it wasn’t for the United States. So, when you look at this, what Trump is saying is, I am using left-wing arguments—colonialism, changing names, imperialism, inviting in communist, autocratic governments that don’t reflect the will of people in the case of China, and I’m flipping them and putting them in your face.
And the whole point is to reexamine the status quo across the board. It’s kind of an anti-woke argument, isn’t it? Everything is up for grabs, and if the woke people think they can rewrite the history and traditions of the United States, maybe don’t. Trump can, too.
Thank you so much for tuning in today. Please subscribe to
for our next episode.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
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by dap | Jan 14, 2025 | Daily Signal
Lawmakers and allies weighed in on Tuesday as the Senate Armed Services Committee held its confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, the former Army National Guard officer, former Fox News host, and President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense.
“I’ve known Pete for some time. I was a female in the military. We want to make sure that our military is getting back to lethality and really providing a fighting machine. And so, Pete can bring that. He can dewokify,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., told The Daily Signal before the hearing. “Dewokify” describes eliminating the Left’s “woke” diversity, equity, and inclusion and LGBTQ agenda from the military.
“l have no doubt that he is going to get the Pentagon back to its primary mission: lethal readiness,” Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., said before Hegseth gave his opening statement.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., noted in the hearing that Hegseth had recovered from his past. “We’ve all made mistakes. I made mistakes. And [Hegseth’s wife] Jennifer, thank you for loving [Pete] through that mistake, because the only reason why I’m here and not in prison is because my wife loved me, too.”
“It seems to me that you’ve supervised more people than most U.S. senators,” Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said after Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., questioned Hegseth on his lack of experience leading larger organizations of more than 100 people.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., thanked Hegseth for his military service. He then said,
I also want to thank you for your clarity in articulating the vision you have for the Department of Defense in restoring an ethos, a warrior ethos. Which is in stark contrast to the ethos we’ve seen the last four years, which is of weakness and wokeness.
“Today, we start taking our military back. We can’t listen to all this woke crowd on the Left. All they want to do is block everything we’re going to do, slow President Trump down, slow the military down. We’ve got to take it back, and it starts today,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., told The Daily Signal.
“We can’t wait. We can’t stall getting him to the Pentagon, to get him on the job, and do what he has to do,” said Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said in a press release:
I’ve known Pete Hegseth for more than 10 years, and he’s been a leader in fighting for his fellow veterans here in the halls of Congress. He would reprioritize the Pentagon not on social engineering or woke policies, but rather on war fighting, lethality, and deterrence. The ultimate goal of the Department of Defense is to prevent wars, and the only way you do that is by peace through strength.
Sean Parnell, a longtime friend of Hegseth, told ThIfe Daily Signal after the hearing that he thought the confirmation went as well as it could have gone. He pointed out that Hegseth was mindful about reforming the Defense Department. “The policy stuff really matters to him, not just the top line stuff. And you know, sometimes in a hearing, you get seven minutes to reply, and there’s a lot of filibustering and grandstanding. But you know, he really gets this stuff at a deep, substantive level. And you know, his commitment to the war fighter really is unwavering, because he’s not far removed from being a war fighter.”
As the contentious hearing concluded, the mood was bright, seemingly undeterred from the tough questioning. Before he left, the nominee shook hands and smiled with his friends and the military veterans who had come out to support him.
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by dap | Jan 14, 2025 | Daily Signal
A focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion has damaged the effectiveness of the U.S. military and hurt recruitment numbers.
Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee grilled President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, on Tuesday. One exchange in particular highlighted the wrongheaded thinking that infects some in the current U.S. leadership and how it addresses the military’s challenges.
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the ranking member of the panel, said in hostile questioning of Hegseth that the military is “more diverse than it has ever been” and that it is more lethal.
The military may be more “diverse” than it has ever been. However, it’s
and faces severe readiness challenges.
As Vice President-elect JD Vance noted on X during the questioning, the military has suffered through an ongoing recruitment crisis.
The Pentagon, especially under the Biden administration, has made diversity, equity, and inclusion a priority for the military. The justification was that to bring in new people, the military needed to “look like” the country.
Alex Wagner, the Air Force’s assistant secretary for manpower and reserve affairs, explained the administration’s reasoning at a 2023
.
“Intentional diversity and inclusion efforts allow us to tap into the full talents of the American people and then leverage those talents to defend the nation,” Wagner said.
He said that the focus on DEI was “informed by science and business best practices, congressional mandates, data-focused policy reviews and assessments.”
The most prominent pro-DEI business study
, however. But it’s no surprise that the military continued to have abysmal recruitment records throughout President Joe Biden’s tenure despite the claims of DEI proponents.
The diversity efforts seem to have done little to bring in a flood of recruits from previously underrepresented backgrounds. Worse, there has been a collapse of recruitment from demographics that disproportionately served in the past.
According to a report by the Daily Caller News Foundation, there has been a
.
That shouldn’t be a surprise, because as Daily Caller further reported, the Air Force in 2022 made reducing the number of
. Racial quotas not only damage the ability of the military to promote the best and brightest to the highest ranks, but they also demoralize those who either didn’t get a promotion and those who serve under commanders who they may now wonder whether or not they got their positions on their merits.
It’s no wonder retainment is
Most ominously for the U.S. all-volunteer military, the armed forces saw a severe downturn in
, many of whom have expressed extreme disenchantment with military service. Veterans also increasingly tell people not to sign up.
“Pew surveys in 2011 and again in 2019 found approximately 80% of veterans would advise young people to join the military,” the Wall Street Journal reported in October. “We recently commissioned a demographically representative YouGov survey of 2,100 veterans. Our data show the share of veterans recommending military service plunged 20 percentage points in five years, to just 62%.”
According to the Journal’s survey, “only 14% of veterans want the military to pay more attention to DEI.”
How can the United States continue to have the world’s most “lethal” army as its pool of warfighters dries up?
Those who defend DEI practices and insist that the military’s recruiting woes have nothing to do with
. At a time in which the number and scale of foreign conflicts is escalating, it’s alarming that the U.S. military appears increasingly
.
It shouldn’t be forgotten that even in the age of drones and other kinds of advanced military hardware, the backbone of any military is still a man
. What’s happened under Biden is that previous recruiting challenges became acute. The administration focused on divisive DEI programs while hiding behind the mantra that for the military, “diversity is our strength.”
We now have a glut of four-star generals, but too few rank-and-file troops, as Hegseth noted at Tuesday’s hearing.
“The military exists to be lethal and to kill our enemies,”
explained in a recent interview on “The Daily Signal Podcast.”
“It’s a purpose that puts the military at odds with the values of our liberal society. … And what’s happened, certainly in the last decade or so, is that the military has become just another institution that reflects the values of our civil society. Those are values that are incompatible with an organization committed to lethality.”
A change is leadership and direction is
. Perhaps in a sign of things to come, the Army
recruitment that it hasn’t experienced in many years.
That’s curious timing. Hopefully, it’s a sign of things to come under the incoming new executive management.
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