#downstream effects of DOGE will be massive

[mstornadox]

IMLS is a super important grant-funding agency. They support infrastructure, collaboration, research, and outreach in GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums). Please make noise to protect the IMLS!

In other news, DOGE is closing many departmental and agency libraries and making it very difficult for the remaining ones to do their work. They are canceling contracts for library resources and services, such as journal subscriptions and cataloging software. Because of mergers and monopolies, these cuts will affect the bottom lines of the few businesses that provide these services to all libraries. Subscription prices are sure to go up. Coincidentally, one of the big library vendors abruptly changed its ebook purchase models; librarians no longer trust it will honor its contracts.

So far, the Library of Congress has been relatively safe. They are truly a congressional agency, so it will take some time for DOGE to start cutting its staff and services. However, LoC data is already being politicized. Subject Heading changes for the Gulf of Mexico and Mount Denali have been fast-tracked. Here is a good overview from Reddit:

And then there is uncertainty about the quality, quantity, and availability of future government data. Some of the specialized and expensive library research databases (especially for business and marketing research) are built upon government open data. In addition to deleted datasets, the changes in staffing means there will be less scrutiny and confidence in whatever data will be released.

Twinkump Linkdump

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in SAN DIEGO at MYSTERIOUS GALAXY next MONDAY (Mar 24), and in CHICAGO with PETER SAGAL on Apr 2. More tour dates here.

I have an excellent excuse for this week's linkdump: I'm in Germany, but I'm supposed to be in LA, and I'm not, because London Heathrow shut down due to a power-station fire, which meant I spent all day yesterday running around like a headless chicken, trying to get home in time for my gig in San Diego on Monday (don't worry, I sorted it):

https://www.mystgalaxy.com/32425Doctorow

Therefore, this is 30th linkdump, in which I collect the assorted links that didn't make it into this week's newsletters. Here are the other 29:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

I always like to start and end these 'dumps with some good news, which isn't easy in these absolutely terrifying times. But there is some good news: Wil Wheaton has announced his new podcast, a successor of sorts to the LeVar Burton Reads podcast. It's called "It's Storytime" and it features Wil reading his favorite stories handpicked from science fiction magazines, including On Spec, the magazine that bought my very first published story (I was 16, it ran in their special youth issue, it wasn't very good, but boy did it mean a lot to me):

https://wilwheaton.net/podcast/

Here's some more good news: a court has found (again!) that works created by AI are not eligible for copyright. This is the very best possible outcome for people worried about creators' rights in the age of AI, because if our bosses can't copyright the botshit that comes out of the "AI" systems trained on our work, then they will pay us:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-appeals-court-rejects-copyrights-171203999.html

Our bosses hate paying us, but they hate the idea of not being able to stop people from copying their entertainment products so! much! more! It's that simple:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/20/everything-made-by-an-ai-is-in-the-public-domain/

This outcome is so much better than the idea that AI training isn't fair use – an idea that threatens the existence of search engines, archiving, computational linguistics, and other clearly beneficial activities. Worse than that, though: if we create a new copyright that allows creators to prevent others from scraping and analyzing their works, our bosses will immediately alter their non-negotiable boilerplate contracts to demand that we assign them this right. That will allow them to warehouse huge troves of copyrighted material that they will sell to AI companies who will train models designed to put us on the breadline (see above, re: our bosses hate paying us):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/13/hey-look-over-there/#lets-you-and-he-fight

The rights of archivists grow more urgent by the day, as the Trump regime lays waste to billions of dollars worth of government materials that were produced at public expense, deleting decades of scientific, scholarly, historical and technical materials. This is the kind of thing you might expect the National Archive or the Library of Congress to take care of, but they're being chucked into the meat-grinder as well.

To make things even worse, Trump and Musk have laid waste to the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a tiny, vital agency that provides funding to libraries, archives and museums across the country. Evan Robb writes about all the ways the IMLS supports the public in his state of Washington:

Technology support. Last-mile broadband connection, network support, hardware, etc. Assistance with the confusing e-rate program for reduced Internet pricing for libraries.

Coordinated group purchase of e-books, e-audiobooks, scholarly research databases, etc.

Library services for the blind and print-disabled.

Libraries in state prisons, juvenile detention centers, and psychiatric institutions.

Digitization of, and access to, historical resources (e.g., newspapers, government records, documents, photos, film, audio, etc.).

Literacy programming and support for youth services at libraries.

The entire IMLS budget over the next 10 years rounds to zero when compared to the US federal budget – and yet, by gutting it, DOGE is amputating significant parts of the country's systems that promote literacy; critical thinking; and universal access to networks, media and ideas. Put it that way, and it's not hard to see why they hate it so.

Trying to figure out what Trump is up to is (deliberately) confusing, because Trump and Musk are pursuing a chaotic agenda that is designed to keep their foes off-balance:

https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-donald-trump-chaos/

But as Hamilton Nolan writes, there's a way to cut through the chaos and make sense of it all. The problem is that there are a handful of billionaires who have so much money that when they choose chaos, we all have to live with it:

The significant thing about the way that Elon Musk is presently dismantling our government is not the existence of his own political delusions, or his own self-interested quest to privatize public functions, or his own misreading of economics; it is the fact that he is able to do it. And he is able to do it because he has several hundred billion dollars. If he did not have several hundred billion dollars he would just be another idiot with bad opinions. Because he has several hundred billion dollars his bad opinions are now our collective lived experience.

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-underlying-problem

We actually have a body of law designed to prevent this from happening. It's called "antitrust" and 40 years ago, Jimmy Carter decided to follow the advice of some of history's dumbest economists who said that fighting monopolies made the economy "inefficient." Every president since, up to – but not including – Biden, did even more to encourage monopolization and the immense riches it creates for a tiny number of greedy bastards.

But Biden changed that. Thanks to the "Unity Taskforce" that divided up the presidential appointments between the Democrats' corporate wing and the Warren/Sanders wing, Biden appointed some of the most committed, effective trustbusters we'd seen for generations:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

After Trump's election, there was some room for hope that Trump's FTC would continue to pursue at least some of the anti-monopoly work of the Biden years. After all, there's a sizable faction within the MAGA movement that hates (some) monopolies:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/24/enforcement-priorities/#enemies-lists

But last week, Trump claimed to have illegally fired the two Democratic commissioners on the FTC: Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter. I stan both of these commissioners, hard. When they were at the height of their powers in the Biden years, I had the incredible, disorienting experience of getting out of bed, checking the headlines, and feeling very good about what the government had just done.

Trump isn't legally allowed to fire Bedoya and Slaughter. Perhaps he's just picking this fight as part of his chaos agenda (see above). But there are some other pretty good theories about what this is setting up. In his BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller proposes that Trump is using this case as a wedge, trying to set a precedent that would let him fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/why-trump-tried-to-fire-federal-trade

But perhaps there's more to it. Stoller just had Commissioner Bedoya on Organized Money, the podcast he co-hosts with David Dayen, and Bedoya pointed out that if Trump can fire Democratic commissioners, he can also fire Republican commissioners. That means that if he cuts a shady deal with, say, Jeff Bezos, he can order the FTC to drop its case against Amazon and fire the Republicans on the commission if they don't frog when he jumps:

https://www.organizedmoney.fm/p/trumps-showdown-at-the-ftc-with-commissioner

(By the way, Organized Money is a fantastic podcast, notwithstanding the fact that they put me on the show last week:)

https://audio.buzzsprout.com/6f5ly01qcx6ijokbvoamr794ht81

The future that our plutocrat overlords are grasping for is indeed a terrible one. You can see its shape in the fantasies of "liberatarian exit" – the seasteads, free states, and other assorted attempts to build anarcho-capitalist lawless lands where you can sell yourself into slavery, or just sell your kidneys. The best nonfiction book on libertarian exit is Raymond Criab's 2022 "Adventure Capitalism," a brilliant, darkly hilarious and chilling history of every time a group of people have tried to found a nation based on elevating selfishness to a virtue:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/14/this-way-to-the-egress/#terra-nullius

If Craib's book is the best nonfiction volume on the subject of libertarian exit, then Naomi Kritzer's super 2023 novel Liberty's Daughter is the best novel about life in a libertopia – a young adult novel about a girl growing up in the hell that would be life with a Heinlein-type dad:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/21/podkaynes-dad-was-a-dick/#age-of-consent

But now this canon has a third volume, a piece of design fiction from Atelier Van Lieshout called "Slave City," which specs out an arcology populated with 200,000 inhabitants whose "very rational, efficient and profitable" arrangements produce €7b/year in profit:

https://www.archdaily.com/30114/slave-city-atelier-van-lieshout

This economic miracle is created by the residents' "voluntary" opt-in to a day consisting of 7h in an office, 7h toiling in the fields, 7h of sleep, and 3h for "leisure" (e.g. hanging out at "The Mall," a 24/7, 26-storey " boundless consumer paradise"). Slaves who wish to better themselves can attend either Female Slave University or Male Slave University (no gender controversy in Slave City!), which run 24/7, with 7 hours of study, 7 hours of upkeep and maintenance on the facility, 7h of sleep, and, of course, 3h of "leisure."

The field of design fiction is a weird and fertile one. In his traditional closing keynote for this year's SXSW Interactive festival, Bruce Sterling opens with a little potted history of the field since it was coined by Julian Bleeker:

https://bruces.medium.com/how-to-rebuild-an-imaginary-future-2025-0b14e511e7b6

Then Bruce moves on to his own latest design fiction project, an automated poetry machine called the Versificatore first described by Primo Levi in an odd piece of science fiction written for a newspaper. The Versificatore was then adapted to the screen in 1971, for an episode of an Italian sf TV show based on Levi's fiction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tva-D_8b8-E

And now Sterling has built a Versificatore. The keynote is a sterlingian delight – as all of his SXSW closers are. It's a hymn to the value of "imaginary futures" and an instruction manual for recovering them. It could not be more timely.

Sterling's imaginary futures would be a good upbeat note to end this 'dump with, but I've got a real future that's just as inspiring to close us out with: the EU has found Apple guilty of monopolizing the interfaces to its devices and have ordered the company to open them up for interoperability, so that other manufacturers – European manufacturers! – can make fully interoperable gadgets that are first-class citizens of Apple's "ecosystem":

https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-ordered-by-eu-antitrust-regulators-open-up-rivals-2025-03-19/

It's a good reminder that as America crumbles, there are still places left in the world with competent governments that want to help the people they represent thrive and prosper. As the Prophet Gibson tells us, "the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed." Let's hope that the EU is living in America's future, and not the other way around.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/22/omnium-gatherum/#storytime

Image: TDelCoro https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomasdelcoro/48116604516/

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[follow-up-news]

The Trump administration’s massive federal cuts and swelling feelings of economic uncertainty helped fuel a recession-level spike in layoff plans last month, new data showed Thursday. US-based employers last month announced plans to slash 172,017 jobs, a 103% increase from a year ago and the highest February total since 2009, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas’s latest monthly job cuts report released Thursday. It’s the 12th highest monthly total in the 32 years Challenger has been tracking job cuts. The 11 others (four came during the Covid-19 pandemic) all occurred when the US was in a recession, Challenger data shows. The largest share of job cut announcements came in the government sector, where the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency has axed jobs, slashed federal spending and scrapped contracts. By Challenger’s count, there were 62,242 announced cuts across 17 federal agencies. That’s a 41,311% increase from the 151 cuts announced through February 2024, Challenger noted. The DOGE effect was not limited to the public sector: Downstream impacts, such as the loss of funding for private nonprofits, led to another 894 cuts, according to the report.

[dark-rx]

US employers cut more jobs last month than any February since 2009

The Trump administration’s massive federal cuts and swelling feelings of economic uncertainty helped fuel a recession-level spike in layoff plans last month, new data showed Thursday.

US-based employers last month announced plans to slash 172,017 jobs, a 103% increase from a year ago and the highest February total since 2009, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas’s latest monthly job cuts report released Thursday.

It’s the 12th highest monthly total in the 32 years Challenger has been tracking job cuts. The 11 others (four came during the Covid-19 pandemic) all occurred when the US was in a recession, Challenger data shows.

The largest share of job cut announcements came in the government sector, where the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency has axed jobs, slashed federal spending and scrapped contracts.

By Challenger’s count, there were 62,242 announced cuts across 17 federal agencies. That’s a 41,311% increase from the 151 cuts announced through February 2024, Challenger noted.

The DOGE effect was not limited to the public sector: Downstream impacts, such as the loss of funding for private nonprofits, led to another 894 cuts, according to the report.

Outside of the government, the next largest cuts were in retail (38,956), technology (14,554) and consumer products (10,625).

Thursday’s report is “something to be concerned about,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY Parthenon, noting that the government cuts accounted for one-third of the overall announced layoffs.

“That in itself is something that is concerning and does portend a shift in the way employers are approaching this labor market,” he said.

As far as the reasons behind the planned cuts (which could come to fruition in the coming weeks and months), DOGE actions led the way (63,583), followed by bankruptcy (35,172), market/economic conditions (28,098) and restructuring (16,828).

“With the impact of the Department of Government Efficiency actions, as well as canceled government contracts, fear of trade wars, and bankruptcies, job cuts soared in February,” Andrew Challenger, senior vice president at Challenger, Gray & Christmas outplacement and executive coaching firm, said in a statement.

Thursday’s report did include a silver lining: Companies’ hiring plans surged in February to 34,580, marking the highest number for February since 2022.

Hints of warning signals

Thursday’s Challenger report provided the first substantial economic data point on the federal workforce cuts and their potential ripple effects. Economists also are closely watching the weekly unemployment claims filings as a gauge of labor market health.

The latest jobless claims data shows that layoff activity remains muted and in line with what was seen pre-pandemic and below historical averages. The number of initial claims dropped last week by 21,000 to 221,000, according to a separate report released Thursday by the Labor Department.

That report did show an increase in the number of federal workers who filed for unemployment (that particular data lags by a week). The number of federal workers who filed initial claims under the Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees program totaled 1,634 for the week ended February 22, that’s up 1,020 filings from the week before.

And based on data released earlier this week, the job market appears to be taking a turn for the worse. Payroll giant ADP’s latest employment report showed that hiring activity in the US private sector slumped in February.

Private-sector employment increased by an estimated 77,000 jobs in February, according to ADP. That’s a dramatic drop-off from the strong job growth of 186,000 seen in January and barely half the 142,500 net gain that economists had expected, according to FactSet estimates.

Service-based industries tied heavily to consumer activity saw some of the biggest employment declines, ADP noted.

“I know there’s been a lot of attention to tariffs, new policies being enacted even this week, but we can’t lose sight also of the biggest driver of the economy, which is consumers,” Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP, said during a call with reporters Wednesday, when the report was released.

Consumer spending fell in January for the first time in nearly two years and saw the biggest monthly drop-off since February 2021, according to Commerce Department data released last week.

The spending dip comes with some caution and important context: Shoppers typically take a breather after holiday spending sprees, and January had some major weather and wildfires. Economists say that one month does not make a trend.

“So long as the consumer stays resilient, I think the economy is in good shape,” Richardson said.

ADP’s report doesn’t always correlate to (and, in some instances, has varied wildly from) the monthly jobs report put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (the gold standard metric); still, the ADP data is looked to as a gauge of how the labor market is trending.

What’s expected in Friday’s jobs report

The BLS is set to release the February jobs report at 8:30 a.m. ET Friday; and, by and large, economists expect it will show another month of solid job gains.

Consensus estimates are for a net gain of 160,000 jobs and for the unemployment rate to stay at 4% (near historically low levels). If the forecasts hold, February’s tally would outpace January’s lower-than-expected 143,000-job gain — a total that economists say was potentially influenced by seasonal factors, frigid weather and the Los Angeles wildfires.

The DOGE-driven employment cuts, however, aren’t likely to make a big splash in February’s jobs report.

That’s partly because of timing: The bulk of the layoffs didn’t occur until after the survey period (which is the week of the 12th). And those that did might not show up anyway: They’re counted as employed if they received pay for any part of the pay period that includes the 12th day of the month.

Also, some federal workers are serving out a paid notice period where they essentially quit but won’t be unemployed weeks or even months from now.

It’s more likely, economists have told CNN, that federal cuts will be more visible in the March and April jobs reports.

The February data could show some weakness in the federal sector. However, since those jobs account for a tiny percentage of overall employment, it shouldn’t move the monthly total in a substantive way, Claudia Sham, chief economist at New Century Advisors, told CNN.

“In some ways, [the February jobs report] could be a snapshot of where the labor market was before things started really moving,” said Sahm, who developed a widely followed recession indicator. “And we won’t see anything really in response to the tariffs or other policies.”

However, the lead up to Friday’s jobs report will include another blind spot. Because of a calendar-related quirk, the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for January won’t be released until next week. Typically, JOLTS is released three days before the jobs report.

Battening down the hatches

In the years following the economy-upheaving pandemic, job growth has slowed, but it has not collapsed. The gains have remained solid enough to fuel consumer spending and put the economy on track for a “soft landing” of reining in inflation without triggering a recession.

“We have been in an environment where the labor market has its flaws but has been in a really good place,” Sahm said. “There’s a certain degree of resilience, given we have a low unemployment rate, low claims and job growth has been, on average, a really respectable pace.”

“But all eyes are on if we’re going to hang on to that,” she added.

Heading into February, the US labor market was still chugging right along at more of a pre-pandemic tick and continuing a historic period of expansion.

Some cracks, however, started to emerge during the past year: The churn that’s needed for a healthy labor market slowed significantly. Businesses weren’t hiring as much, folks weren’t as eager to quit and those without jobs were staying on the sidelines for longer.

Economists chalked this up to election-year uncertainty, over-hiring in sectors such as leisure and hospitality and health care, the cumulative effect of fast-rising prices and the sheer weight of interest rates being at a 23-year high.

Still, businesses and economists alike flagged that there was pent-up momentum waiting to be released — once the election passed and interest rates started to ease.

Once the election was decided, consumer and business sentiment shot higher, and hiring activity was on the rise, according to an array of surveys and economic data.

The “Trump bump,” however, has given way to rising levels of economic uncertainty from businesses and consumers who are reporting jitteriness about the effect of sweeping policy actions such as broad-based tariffs, the direct and ripple effects from slashing federal jobs and funding and mass deportations.

While it’s too soon to tell what the economic impacts will be from these moves, the unknowns can deter businesses’ plans for expansion, said Martha Gimbel, economist and executive director and co-founder of the Budget Lab at Yale University.

“At a time where there is such uncertainty about government spending, where there is such uncertainty about tariffs, why would you make investments in your future workforce when you don’t know what the economic situation is going to be and you don’t know what your needs are going to be?” Gimbel said. “You’re starting to see more and more people seem to be moving toward a batten-down-the-hatches mentality.”