Government Accountability Office investigators tracked telework at the Social Security Administration from July 2019 through May 2025 and found a sharp cliff after the White House memo. Telework hours fell from 35 percent of total hours in January through March 2025 to 13 percent in April through May 2025, a drop that matched the new posture. That speed matters, because SSA employees had built their lives and budgets around flexibility.
For many, one particular breakdown is a final, damning cause for despair: Minnesota's apparent inability to investigate and potentially prosecute the federal agents responsible. The Department of Homeland Security on Saturday reportedly blocked Minnesota officials from examining the scene of Alex Pretti's shooting. Access was refused even after state officials got a judicial search warrant. As a result, key forensic evidence was almost certainly lost. This comes after state officials were excluded from the investigation into Renee Good's death.
Target's incoming CEO, who starts next week, sent a video message to staff in which he described the violence and loss of life in the local community as "incredibly painful;" he did not mention Trump or ICE directly. Others have been more blunt. Big names in tech and venture capital, as well as small business owners around the country, have expressed outrage at the Trump administration and ICE on their own social media pages, using words like "murderer," "shameful," and "a conscious-less administration."
The factual bullshit from Trump-administration officials about Minnesota is, at least, easily detected: Hear claim, watch video, reject claim. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem declares that Alex Pretti "brandished" a firearm. ( He did not.) White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller tells us Pretti was "an assassin" who "tried to murder federal agents." (Pretti never drew his weapon, got pepper-sprayed, and wound up at the bottom of an ICE dogpile.)
On the campaign trail in 2016, candidate Trump often reassured voters that he intended to hire only the best and most serious people top-of-the-line professionals, if you will. Even his most devoted supporters must look back on that particular vow with amusement. Trump's first term saw him cycle through four full-time chiefs of staff (yes, you count, Mick Mulvaney), national security advisers, and press secretaries among numerous other major staff shakeups.
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The US Air Force's Boeing C-40B Clipper is currently flying west after departing Washington DC Tuesday morning on an undisclosed mission. The aircraft, often described as an airborne 'war room' or 'flying office,' is used to transport high-priority personnel, including Cabinet members, combatant commanders and senior military leaders. It also provides secure, global communications capabilities for VIP transport and special missions.
In many ways, Alex Pretti and Renee Good could have been any of the dozens of Minneapolis residents I met last week. Among them were teachers, store clerks, Uber drivers, charity workers and clergymen a patchwork of humanity withstanding what many have called the Trump administration's siege on their city, which began in December last year and has led to 3,000 arrests, two fatal shootings, and routine rights violations in an operation defined by government brutality.
You know, people use Orwellian they overused the word. Here, Orwellian fit, because time and time again, you would see video of Americans being beaten or, in two cases, gunned down in the streets and DHS, their spokespeople and especially Kristi Noem, going back to Renee Good, lying through her teeth with her cowboy hat on, talking about snowbanks, just making sh*t up about dead Americans gunned down in the street dead Americans gunned down in the street!