Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount

The Rachel Maddow Show

MSNBC

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4.5 • 34K Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rachel Maddow looks at how principled resignations are not only slowing down Donald Trump's agenda to destroy the U.S. federal government, but are drawing attention to the sketchy stunts Trump and Elon Musk are trying to get away with.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Really happy to have you here. It has been another one of those days. NBC News reporting tonight that the Trump administration accidentally, oops, totally didn't mean to fire the people working on bird flu. No idea how that happened. Now, the bird flu experts at USDA, they are trying to hire them back. They did this with the National
0:23.5	Nuclear Security Administration as well, which we talked about on last night's show. Now it's
0:28.4	with the bird flu workers. Oops. What does this button do? Does anybody know what this button
0:35.7	does? I thought I should ask because I just a minute ago, I just pushed it. Does anybody know what this button does? I thought I should ask because I just a minute
0:38.4	ago I just pushed it. Does anybody know what it does? Got any other buttons I can push?
0:46.1	The Washington Post reports tonight that the Trump administration is considering a plan to
0:50.7	incinerate $500 million worth of COVID tests that you've already paid for.
0:58.0	It's not because there's anything wrong with these COVID tests. It's just because,
1:01.6	I guess, you know, COVID tests, icky.
1:05.8	$500 million worth of perfectly good COVID tests that we, the taxpayers, already purchased.
1:13.5	They are in storage. They are stockpiled right now set to be distributed for free to the
1:19.7	American people in the event of another big uptick in COVID. But instead, the Trump administration
1:24.5	apparently wants to destroy them because, you know, government
1:30.7	efficiency.
1:33.5	The Trump administration just today fired more than 10% of the staff at the National Science
1:38.1	Foundation. National Science Foundation was founded in 1950 to promote science and engineering
1:43.2	and work on U.S. defense and public health.
1:47.1	National Science Foundation provides a quarter of the federal support that goes for basic research
1:52.6	at America's colleges and universities. It's how we fund astronomy observatories. It is how we fund
1:58.4	our research stations in Antarctica. Trump just today
2:02.4	fired a huge proportion of their workforce. A senior engineer at the GSA, the General
2:09.2	Services Administration, has also just resigned today, reportedly after trying to block people
	...

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