Editorial Roundup: United States

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

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Feb. 20

The Washington Post says Musk's mass firings are backfiring

President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have been rapidly firing federal workers with little consideration for which ones are critical to government functioning. So now, the Energy Department is scrambling to rehire people abruptly let go from the National Nuclear Security Administration. The Federal Aviation Administration is struggling to explain why 400 staffers were let go mere days after one of the deadliest airplane crashes in U.S. history. And the Agriculture Department is attempting to bring back people fired despite being part of the effort to stop avian flu, which has decimated chicken farms and sent egg prices soaring.

Americans widely agree that their government is burdened by “waste, fraud and abuse.” But the U.S. DOGE Service is simply taking a sledgehammer to federal operations. The result is predictable: Vital functions — including safeguarding nuclear weapons — that should have been nowhere near the chopping block have been axed.

The White House has yet to disclose the total number of people precipitously fired. About 77,000 of 2.4 million civilian federal workers opted for deferred resignation, which is supposed to pay them through September. Then Trump fired many of the 200,000 federal employees on “probationary status,” meaning they had spent less than two years in their current roles. It’s unclear how many probationary workers were let go in the “Valentine’s Day Massacre,” but thousands of them have joined class-action lawsuits to challenge Trump’s ability to fire them without proof of “poor performance.”

The dismissals were so chaotic and rushed, termination letters often listed wrong start dates or wrong jobs, or left the agency name blank, as if a form letter hadn’t been properly filled out. Some workers notified their own bosses that they had been fired.

This mass firing has been compared to President Bill Clinton’s reducing the government headcount by 351,000 positions — or about 20 percent. “The era of big government is over,” Clinton said in 1996.

But Clinton’s approach was quite different. He launched a six-month review of agencies to identify positions that could safely be eliminated and then slimmed the workforce gradually. In short, his administration did the hard work that Musk only claimed DOGE, which stands for Department of Government Efficiency, would do. Clinton also spoke frequently about the need to help the remaining federal workers become even more productive.

In contrast, Trump and Musk often denigrate federal workers. Musk has claimed they are “ getting wealthy at taxpayer expense.”

Americans will experience the fallout from DOGE’s haste soon enough. The National Park Service has let go about 1,000 employees, and many of them have been sharing their stories on social media. These are Americans who love the outdoors and often are willing to live in remote areas or earn less than they could make in the private sector because they want to preserve — and share their enthusiasm for — the country’s parks. Without them, it will be difficult to keep the parks maintained, clean and open.

The IRS, for its part, has laid off thousands of employees in the midst of tax-filing season. IRS staffing was already so low that, in 2022, only 10 percent of taxpayer calls were answered, and there were long delays in processing paperwork. The agency was recently granted funding to upgrade its antiquated computer systems and pursue unpaid taxes from wealthy scofflaws. But Trump is rolling back that effort.

Trump and Musk celebrate their layoffs as if they will bring significant savings. They won’t. The U.S. government spent $6.75 trillion last year. Cutting 10 percent of the federal workforce stands to save about $25 billion, economists at Deutsche Bank have calculated — less than 1 percent of the total. Musk has also claimed that Social Security has been paying benefits to millions of people older than 100 who are likely dead. But last year, only 86,000 Americans 99 and older were receiving payments, and this number tracks with census data.

Yes, the government needs to evolve and continually strive for greater efficiency. For years, the Government Accountability Office, among other entities, has been urging technology upgrades and more checks on wasteful spending. But Musk’s approach will not achieve lasting change that benefits America. It’s a “fire first, figure it out later” strategy. That’s not the way to improve nuclear security or any other critical government objectives.

ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/20/elon-musk-doge-federal-workers-backfire/

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Feb. 23

The New York Times says Trump chooses loyalty over expertise

In an era that demands stable, experienced leadership, President Trump’s decision Friday to remove Gen. Charles Q. Brown as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — alongside other military firings and a series of contentious cabinet appointments — underscored once again an alarming preference for loyalty over expertise. This shift doesn’t just undermine the future of policy and governance; it destabilizes the very foundation of the institutions that have long safeguarded America’s democracy and substitutes politics for professionalism.

The ousting of General Brown, a leader celebrated for his strategic acumen, deep experience and steady guidance, in favor of a less-tested and seemingly more compliant figure raises urgent questions: Will the new Joint Chiefs chairman dare to give Mr. Trump honest advice that he doesn’t want to hear? How will the president try to exert power over the Joint Chiefs, who have historically been essential sources of expertise and seasoned counsel? How would a politicized change in Joint Chiefs leadership affect complex discussions about geopolitical priorities, from tensions in Eastern Europe and the Middle East to the South China Sea?

Friday’s purge at the Pentagon isn’t an isolated maneuver — it’s indicative of an administration intent on reshaping itself around the president’s personal network. Consider what we now know of who will serve as Mr. Trump’s cabinet. These selections follow a perilous trend where qualifications take a back seat to fealty, and where the echo of agreement becomes more valuable than evidence-based expertise.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s most notable qualification for his job was his tenure as a Fox News political commentator, a credential that has frequently eclipsed any engagement with the complex realities of defense strategy for the president. Mr. Hegseth’s confirmation hearing raised serious concerns about excessive drinking and how he treats women. To date, his leadership suggests a Pentagon more attuned to the president’s political playbook than the sobering calculus of global military engagement. His recent remarks on retreating from Ukraine, for instance, sent allies in Europe reeling, and the administration scrambling to walk them back.

Then there’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr., named to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Mr. Kennedy has been a vocal skeptic of vaccines, promoting misinformation that undermines public health. His appointment to H.H.S. doesn’t just defy logic; it represents an affront to the foundational principles of the department he now oversees, which is already shelving some campaigns for flu shots and other vaccines. In this context, science is sidelined in favor of fringe theories, jeopardizing the nation’s ability to effectively manage current and future health challenges.

Similarly, Tulsi Gabbard’s appointment as the country’s top intelligence officer raises multiple red flags. Beyond her military background and support of Mr. Trump’s agenda, what are Ms. Gabbard’s qualifications to oversee the president’s intel briefings and to coordinate the various branches of the intelligence community? Her foreign policy views frequently conflict with established U.S. approaches, and she has demonstrated sympathy for and defended authoritarian figures such as Bashar al-Assad, the former Syrian dictator, and President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

In voting against her confirmation, Senator Mitch McConnell, the former Republican majority leader, said the director of national intelligence should not be someone “with a history of alarming lapses in judgment.” But Mr. McConnell was the only Republican senator to vote against her; the others in his party ignored serious questions about the coherence of defense policy under Ms. Gabbard’s influence.

Kash Patel’s confirmation as director of the F.B.I. is perhaps the most worrisome illustration of this loyalty-first strategy. Mr. Patel’s past efforts to undermine critical investigations highlight a prioritization of political interests over the impartial execution of justice, a core tenet expected from the nation’s top law enforcement agency. He has frequently trafficked in conspiracy theories, enemies lists, and unfounded vendettas over facts.

Mr. Patel’s post calls upon him to be independent, steadfast in his integrity and sober in his decision-making. Like the military, the bureau’s mission needs to transcend partisan politics to maintain public trust, and its leader should not only understand the intricacies of national security law but also adhere to truth and transparency. Mr. Patel hasn’t demonstrated he has either the qualifications or the disposition for the position he has now accepted.

“My reservations with Mr. Patel stem from his own prior political activities and how they may influence his leadership,” Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said in a post on X. Ms. Murkowski voted against his appointment, saying, “The F.B.I. must be trusted as the federal agency that roots out crime and corruption, not focused on settling political scores.”

Congress intentionally established the term of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to extend across presidential administrations for similar reasons as well as to preserve institutional knowledge. Now, Mr. Trump has tapped Dan Caine, a retired Air Force lieutenant general, to lead the Joint Chiefs. Mr. Caine is an unusual choice, not only because he is retired and for his rank, which is lower than his predecessors, but also for the support Mr. Trump has ascribed to him in past political speeches. “‘I love you, sir. I think you’re great, sir. I’ll kill for you, sir,’” Mr. Trump has said General Caine told him.

As General Brown was being dismissed, Mr. Hegseth also acted to replace the military’s judge advocates general — the top lawyers for the Air Force, Navy and Army — as well as the first woman to lead the Navy and the vice chief of staff of the Air Force. As Rosa Brooks, a professor at Georgetown Law and national security expert, wrote on X, “It’s what you do when you’re planning to break the law: You get rid of any lawyers who might try to slow you down.”

This move was similar to Mr. Trump’s dismissals of inspectors general at several executive departments, and that of the heads of the Office of Government Ethics and the Office of Special Counsel, the agency that investigates whistle-blower complaints. Having learned from impediments during his first term, the president is moving quickly to silence any lawyers or executive branch officials who might object to his plans, which frequently exceed the boundaries of constitutional law and practice.

Mr. Trump has the right to choose the advisers with whom he surrounds himself. With each of these selections, however, the president is putting loyalty and the expectation of fealty ahead of expertise, merit and a clear record of sound, independent judgment on issues related to the agencies that they lead. The American people have no reason to be confident that these agency leaders are working in their interests rather than in the president’s interests. -The result is a leadership caste that mirrors Mr. Trump’s worldview, to the detriment of broader democratic interests.

The Senate, in confirming all these cabinet members on behalf of the president, accepted responsibility to oversee their actions and to intervene when any of them endangers effective — and frankly, given its track record so far, legal — governance.

Congress always has the right to speak up and object to Mr. Trump’s actions. Yes, many senators gave deference to the president’s cabinet preferences and approved his nominations, in some cases quite narrowly. Already, though, many appear concerned about the consequences of those choices. Members of both parties have expressed worry about Mr. Trump’s outrageous parroting of the Russian line on Ukraine. They are likely to be even more upset when Elon Musk’s cuts reach their states, when record-breaking measles outbreaks happen, or when a weakened F.B.I. misses an important national security warning or fumbles an investigation.

Mr. Trump can fire the lawyers, but he can’t silence elected officials, and they need to do their jobs and raise their voices.

America’s institutions thrive on the robust exchange of ideas and the steady hand of experience. The country’s democracy depends on the checks and balances of its three branches as enshrined by the Constitution. Lawmakers, military officials, and engaged citizens should demand an ethos that champions expertise and diverse perspectives.

In doing so, we preserve the integrity of our government and the trust of a world looking to America for principled leadership. Now is the time to reinforce these pillars, securing a future informed by wisdom and characterized by stability.

ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/23/opinion/trump-pentagon-military-firings.html

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Feb. 21

The Wall Street Journal on RFK Jr.'s first anti-vaccine move as HHS Secretary

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been Health and Human Services secretary for all of a week, but he’s already pressing what looks like an anti-vaccine agenda. Mr. Kennedy never did disavow his vaccine views in the runup to Senate confirmation. He merely said he wouldn’t take away anyone’s vaccines. But the HHS secretary has many tools to undermine vaccines, and his early moves are revealing.

News reports this week say he’s preparing to sack members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. This is the group that decides whether and how to recommend vaccines for the public. Its recommendations help determine which vaccines are covered under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

That’s the program Congress established to compensate individuals injured by vaccines. Its aim is to limit litigation against vaccine makers so they’ll take the high risk of developing them. Plaintiffs can only sue if they first file claims with the special vaccine courts and are rejected. Trial lawyers hate the system since it makes it harder to round up plaintiffs.

Mr. Kennedy is targeting the committee members for alleged conflicts of interest. But none of the members work for drug companies. They’re medical professors and physicians with careers studying vaccines.

Perhaps Mr. Kennedy doesn’t like that they have done research showing vaccines are beneficial and may have—oh no!—even advocated for them. One member advised a presidential cancer panel during President Trump’s first term on how to boost uptake of the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine to prevent cervical cancer. If the committee withdraws a vaccine recommendation, it could be removed from the vaccine compensation program and open manufacturers to mass tort liability.

Mr. Kennedy’s concern about conflicts of interest is especially striking given his own ties to trial lawyers who sue drug companies. He helped spearhead litigation against Merck over its HPV vaccine in which he had a 10% financial interest. He recently agreed to cede his stake to his son who works at the law firm, Wisner Baum, that is suing the company.

Relatedly, there are notable developments in that HPV litigation. The first jury trial began a month ago in a California court. The plaintiff alleges that Merck’s Gardasil HPV vaccine caused her postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS).

The Food and Drug Administration in 2016 determined there was no evidence that the vaccine caused this syndrome. Merck’s vaccine trials showed no difference in the syndrome’s incidence in the placebo and vaccine groups.

Yet Wisner Baum claims Merck “hid adverse events by dismissing them as unrelated to the vaccine.” That’s hard to reckon given that the FDA review details wide-ranging adverse events in trial participants, including car crashes, suicides and animal bites. More participants died from auto and plane accidents than were diagnosed with POTS.

Independent doctors who worked on the trial were also blinded to whether patients received the vaccine when they determined if an injury was caused by the vaccine. This evidence may explain why the California trial wasn’t going the plaintiff firm’s way. After several weeks of hearings, lead trial lawyer Mark Lanier asked Merck to adjourn the trial and start a new one in September.

Mr. Lanier says publicity around Mr. Kennedy’s confirmation hearing may have tainted the jurors. But the plaintiffs could have sought to delay the trial at any time. Why seek a new one after three weeks of hearings—and notably—the day after Mr. Kennedy was confirmed? Do they hope Mr. Kennedy will use his new position to help their case?

Mr. Lanier told Reuters, “without elaborating,” the news service said, that he expects a new scientific study by September that might help his case. Our sources say he’s referring to a study the CDC is currently conducting on POTS and adolescent vaccinations. The CDC reports to Mr. Kennedy.

Merck consented to Mr. Lanier’s request, which lets it focus on defenses in federal multi-district litigation. But the Gardasil plaintiffs and trial lawyers around the country now have a very powerful friend in government who can help them.

Would Louisiana doctor and Sen. Bill Cassidy, who provided a decisive vote for RFK Jr.’s confirmation, care to comment?

ONLINE: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/rfk-jr-vaccines-advisory-committee-hhs-secretary-cdc-7c7dc420?mod=editorials_article_pos6

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Feb. 20

The Guardian on Gaza's future

The pain and damage wreaked in the last 16 months will reverberate through families, communities and the Middle East for decades to come. On Thursday, the bodies of two young children and their mother, and that of an 83-year-old peace activist, were returned to Israel by Hamas. They were kidnapped in the 7 October 2023 raid in which the militants killed around 1,200 Israelis and others. Around 48,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its war in response.

It was always feared that the ceasefire deal, which has brought desperately needed respite for Palestinians in Gaza and the return of Israeli and foreign hostages, would be fleeting. The six-week opening stage is due to expire on 1 March. The talks on the more complicated second stage have yet to begin, more than a fortnight after they were due.

There are two glimmers of hope. The first was the striking confidence of Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, in declaring last weekend that “phase two is absolutely going to begin”. The second is that Hamas, militarily battered and under pressure within Gaza and from Arab governments, has said that in the next phase it would be willing to release all remaining hostages at once, rather than in staggered groups. In exchange, it wants Israel’s complete and rapid military withdrawal from Gaza and the release of hundreds more Palestinians held by Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly said that this phase would be conditional on the disarming of Hamas and the end of its presence in Gaza.

The Israeli prime minister does not want to cross Mr Trump. But it has never been in his interests to reach phase two, not least because of the threat that the extremist coalition member Bezalel Smotrich may walk out. His security chiefs long believed politics was the biggest obstruction to a deal. Now he has dismissed them from the negotiation team, replacing them with his well-connected confidant Ron Dermer, who could yet attempt to bypass Mr Witkoff and deal with Mr Trump directly.

At this late stage, the extension of phase one would be better than nothing. The agreement and implementation of phase two, inherently more difficult, would be a major step forward. But the immense question of phase three looms: what form reconstruction in Gaza might take. Mr Trump’s abhorrent announcement that Palestinians should make way for a US-owned “Riviera of the Middle East” – embraced by Mr Netanyahu – has precipitated a discussion that had been sidestepped lest it derail the deal, as well as due to its inherent complexity.

Ethnically cleansing Palestinians would require countries willing to take them. Though Egypt and Jordan rely heavily on US aid, their leaders cannot afford to comply. Arab countries will meet in Riyadh on Friday as they scramble for an alternative plan, discussing Cairo’s hastily drawn-up proposal under which the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and others would fund reconstruction, with Hamas formally excluded from governance and oversight of the work. Even if they can find a theoretically workable solution, Mr Trump would need to be flattered into agreement. In the meantime, with hostages still held, and with conditions in Gaza remaining so dire, the priority must be to maintain the ceasefire. Whether or not it can be the foundation of a long-term response to this crisis, it is still essential to save lives now.

ONLINE: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/20/the-guardian-view-on-gazas-future-the-ceasefire-and-hostage-deal-must-not-fizzle-out

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Feb. 23

The Boston Globe says the SCOTUS must protect its power and that of Congress from executive overreach

As legal challenges to the actions of the Trump administration mount, President Trump declared in a social media post: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”

The quote was not original — it has been attributed to the French dictator Napoleon Bonaparte.

But the laws and the Constitution of the United States were crafted to prohibit Napoleon’s form of authoritarian leadership. A key principle is that we are a government of the people with three distinct branches, each meant to serve as a check and balance to the other two.

Since its foundational ruling in Marbury v. Madison, in which the Supreme Court gave itself the power to review actions by Congress and the presidency and declare them unconstitutional when called for, the court has protected its power and that of Congress to rein in the executive branch. In fact, the current court majority under Chief Justice John Roberts has been particularly vocal in its disdain for executive-branch agencies exerting expansive power in a way that steps on the traditional roles of the legislature and the courts.

Now, Trump seeks to expand his power even further, and in ways the current court’s majority have already rejected. He is doing this in part through a misreading of last term’s ruling granting presidents immunity from criminal prosecution for actions taken within their core constitutional duties. Trump, through Department of Justice attorneys litigating on his behalf, argues that the immunity ruling gave him carte blanche.

Now is the time for the Supreme Court to disabuse Trump of that notion and protect its own power, and that of Congress. It’s not only crucial for democracy, but it’s the only way for the court to stay consistent with its own rulings.

Just last term, the court issued a ruling freeing courts from being bound by agencies’ interpretations of the federal laws that empower them when those laws are ambiguous.

In that ruling, penned by Roberts, the court’s conservative majority held that such deference steps on the constitutional powers of Congress, which creates laws, and the courts, which interpret them.

“The very point of the traditional tools of statutory construction —the tools courts use every day — is to resolve statutory ambiguities,” Roberts wrote. “That is no less true when the ambiguity is about the scope of an agency’s own power — perhaps the occasion on which abdication in favor of the agency is least appropriate.”

The justices should remember that as the challenges to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which was not created by Congress, and the authority of its de facto leader Elon Musk, who is neither elected nor Senate confirmed, land at the Supreme Court’s door. Lawsuits, including those filed by the attorneys general of 14 states including Massachusetts and Rhode Island, are seeking to stop Musk and other DOGE agents from firing federal employees, denying funding for agencies and their programs, and other actions taken without apparent legal authority.

If the court has power to step in on cases where Congress has authorized the creation of an agency, it is clear that the court can and must step in when such an executive body is acting with no legal authority at all.

In response, the government essentially argues that Musk and DOGE are just extensions of Trump himself, and are protected by the broad authority the president has over actions within the executive branch. The Justice Department even cites the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling as authority in its legal filings.

The justices must be clear that the ruling may have shielded Trump from a criminal conviction, but it does not insulate him from the limits of the Constitution.

Trump cannot simply declare Musk to be his White House deputy to avoid the constitutional problem with his actions. As the lawsuit from state officials argue, Musk is acting well beyond the authority granted to White House employees. Rather, his role is that of a “principal officer of the United States,” akin to a cabinet member. Such a position requires Senate confirmation. That should make it easy for the justices to strike those actions down and thus restore some constitutional order.

Additionally, this and other lawsuits cite violations of the Administrative Procedure Act, a law that the court has used repeatedly to strike down agency actions that do not follow the procedures laid out by Congress. This should be another layup for the court. As Roberts wrote in the decision striking down agency deference: “The text of the APA means what it says.”

It is certainly true that the court has vastly expanded the president’s power. The immunity ruling is the clearest example of that.

But Trump has taken the inch the court has given him and is now trying to expand it to a mile. He has, literally, called himself a king. It is up to the Supreme Court, in following the Constitution, the law, and its own precedent, to let him know how wrong he is.

ONLINE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/02/23/opinion/trump-scotus-napoleon/