RAISE ALARMS EVERYWHERE, FOR REAL

* Active US Government Dismantling Is Underway *

Jan 28, 2025

The photo is of a skyline blowing up all along a horizon, with a helicopter off on the side. It’s a metaphor for what the Trump Administration is doing right now with the federal government. Photo by Chandler Cruttenden via Unsplash.

Active US Government Dismantling Is Underway

We don’t normally post news here as its not our mission but it appears as if an active administrative coup may be unfolding. There are multiple confirmed and unconfirmed indications that the Trump Administration is actively dismantling the US Government right now.

The federal executive branch appears to be seizing power, money, and authorities from Congress while simultaneously stopping widespread federal government activity, services, activities, and possibly essential functions.

NOTE: Recommendations for action are in the middle of this post.

Reading The Signs

Am I overreacting? My initial analysis says no.

To get a better sense for things, I found some quickly-evolving reporting. Some of the new developments apparently came out on a Reddit forum leaked from OPM (Office of Personnel Management) employees on Monday night (screenshots at the end of this post). Reporters seem to have found some verifiable info since but the reporting I found doesn’t convey quite the same meaning as the alleged leaked employee info — especially to people who understand how the federal government works.

Reading the Reddit screenshots switched my thinking on all this immediately. Plus, they read like how federal employees talk about all the involved pieces and parts.

I worked in the federal government for something like 18 years. In several positions, I worked in continuity of operations programs (COOP) and continuity of [Constitutional] government (COG). The nature of COOP/COG work is that you have to understand some of the very deep and essential things (get the policy before it disappears) that government needs to be doing (like, government’s actual essence… thus “essential”) because government exists and because society created it. In COOP/COG work you also have some sense for what needs to happen for those essential things, whatever they are, to actually work and function.

Like you need employees, for one thing. You need to be able to move money. You need to oversee contracts. And so on. The Trump administration has also stopped money from moving in lots of ways. That’s going to be a huge, huge problem all in itself. More below on that.

My other relevant signal-reading experience is that I worked for years on risk assessment, situational awareness, and resource status stuff for the US government for disasters but also for risks like terrorism, cyber threats, etc. It was essentially “disaster intelligence.”

You get very good at analyzing situations and seeing very weak signals that indicate deeper structural shifts and changes going on. Sometimes they grow and strengthen into clearer signals that other people can observe as well — like high winds plus dry brush is a signal that the wildfire risk is increased. Weak signals don’t always play out into something bigger because sometimes things just re-balance. Yet when all the situations/factors/risks/events are right you can get a huge bad disaster. For example, like the 2003 southern California wildfires where there were soooooooo many factors that came together with the end result being a wildfire catastrophe.

Factors are coming together here in the administration that appear to be potentially catastrophic for the US, for the US Government, for the US economy, and for the American people and their communities.

The cascading effects would be spectacular for Americans, for American communities, and for American economies… but the cascading effects would also be felt worldwide.

The Bluesky post below notes that “Perhaps tonight is a good night to remind ourselves that the federal government is 20% of GDP & 2% of overall non-farm employment, & dismantling this… is going to not only be a political but also an economic disaster.”

Here’s another “signal” screenshot — weakening of the FDIC, no doubt with more damage on its way.

It’s seismic and explosive but most of us won’t feel the devastation of the shock waves for at least days or weeks. Some people have already felt impacts… or will within hours.

There’s more on this as it unfolds with several related posts on Rebecca Solnit’s Facebook wall, including this first compilation post and several follow-up posts. By the time you read this, related developments may well be further along. (I’m not sharing news links because this is evolving fast as breaking news. To find more, search for “trump office of personnel management” with a 1-day filter to find OPM stuff, but there’s more going on than just what’s happening at OPM. Lots more.)

Solnit’s compilation post includes quotes in post text, a few source citations, and screenshots of reporting and commentary. She adds:

“The executive branch of the government is dismantling the government. In ways that are not particularly legal. This is an authoritarian coup, seizing powers that are not the executive branch's and disabling the administrative state and its necessary functions. Call your reps in the morning. Raise hell. Do not let this slide.”

I’ll do you one better:

CALL ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE.

Millions of Americans and American society itself is at risk if the US government is dismantled.

For real — call everyone. And I’m not talking about calling the usual people everyone in politics always tells you to call. I mean… call everyone. Get the word out in your social gossip networks and at work and wherever. Get folks talking, too, in all the places. We can bring public pressure. It can stop certain things but we won’t know which until we drive the pressure and see the results. Not driving any pressure will lead to wayyyyyy bad results, so driving as much pressure as possible can help us make things less bad. It is very, very worth it.

What we haven’t done yet in the last decade in political organizing is to apply pressure to way more places. We tend to focus on the US House, US Senate, & White House. What about putting pressure absolutely everywhere else, too?

We can bring pressure in way more places. It’s a repeated point because so far we haven’t done much of it collectively. We could, though.

We can leverage federalism better. Local, county, tribal, territorial, and state governments have the power of jurisdiction and legal standing and will push back in various ways. Many lawsuits have already been filed by local/state government on these very subjects just in the last week. But they can do a whole heck of a lot more than lawsuits. We can encourage local/city/tribal/state governments to get way more creative.

We can better leverage our social networks; through the people we know and what we talk to them about. We can better leverage the media. We can better leverage pressure on businesses but also on lobbyists and business associations/alliances. And so on.

Call Everyone:

Call people you know to let them know this dismantling is happening & may well affect their job, childcare, school, healthcare, government aid in any form, ability to get groceries, etc. The federal government is deeply intertwined within our lives. We need to talk to people about what’s under attack & dismantle-ment & how that will/can change our everyday lives.
Especially call people who work in any level of government… like for cities, towns, counties, a state, a tribe, etc.. Call government offices & ask what this means for your local/city/county/community college/university/state office, job, projects, grants, staffing, etc. Employees worried about their jobs who talk about it with colleagues and leadership can have surprising effects.
Call all elected officials at every level of government. Local & state governments are absolutely reliant on the US government remaining intact & solvent to continue to exist. Also see the screenshot below where government failing & not functioning is already leading to legislators’ offices being swamped with people trying to get government to work because it’s already broken in many ways just in the first week of this.
Call newspapers, TV news, radio shows, podcasts, & anyone reporting news. Ask them to report ASAP on the thousands/millions of impacts these actions will have on Americans, on communities, & on businesses. Help them find local angles where there will be impacts like very soon. Local/regional news folks love finding local relevance for their stories.
Call any lobbying group or individual lobbyists you are aware of especially business related ones that might not want the federal government to be dismantled because they’ve worked for decades to influence it to be the way they push it to be. LOBBIES HAVE A LOT OF MONEY & INFLUENCE WITH CONGRESS. Find lobbyists by finding any association that will be impacted by the administration’s actions & push them to raise heck. For example, landlords need tenants for rent payments, not deported missing people. Etc.
Call businesses & make sure they know the economy is likely to crash & that they’ll have a hard time making money if society falls apart & so on.

Big Pressure Works

Big pressure has already stopped a few things for the current Trump Administration. Big pressure played a part in why the family separation policy eventually went away in the prior Trump Administration.

Here’s one example of the impacts of pressure not from political organizing but from constituents already dealing with government failures in week one and calling their legislators —

Part of the pressure that’s needed in this moment is the normal bringing-political-pressure places: where legislators are, and through the political parties. Only we need more of it than we’ve probably ever done… because so far it doesn’t seem like a lot of elected officials are being very LOUD, or coordinating on big plans to navigate all this —

Devolution

I mentioned continuity of operations programs / continuity of [Constitutional] government work before (COOP/COG work).

The federal government has identified whole areas/zones/capabilities/etc. that are essential functions in some way. They are prioritized, too. Some are more for maintaining Constitutional government, and some are more for maintaining the most basic, core, essential US government functions. It’s stuff like keeping up the satellite position-navigation-and-timing (PNT) systems behind a whole lot of critical infrastructure from ships to cell towers to your phone. It’s stuff like wildland firefighting. It’s stuff like sending social security checks. It’s national security. It’s defense. And so on.

How much of that would be affected by The Trump Team’s dismantling efforts?

Devolution is what happens when a government can no longer meet some or all of its essential functions in COOP and COG or otherwise function under the social contract that government was created for. Devolution happens rarely in the US anyway, and usually only if a disaster heavily impacts local government employees, facilities, and capabilities.

Based on the signals we’re seeing over the past few week, the Trump administration might well be seeking the intentional devolution of the United States government. There are lots of possible reasons why but do they matter if the whole society pays?

We built this country for reasons. It’s taken a lot of work, and millions of us were working collectively to evolve it further. Whether it’s intentional or not, the Trump administration has been effectively devolving the United States Government every single day. Some of the damage is not recoverable.

It’s stunning, gut-wrenching, spectacular, godawful, and all the shock words we’ve already used up. I spent years of my life contributing to this country and this government and this society so we could get this far.

Millions of us have. Do they know what’s underway?

We need to get the word out.

CALL EVERYONE.

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The OMB Screenshots

Screenshots below from the alleged OPM employee leaks —

CIO = Chief Information Officer (information technology oversight for an office, agency, or department.
HR = Human resources.
OPM = Office of Personnel Management.
OMB = Office of Management & Budget (an executive branch office for oversight & coordination over federal departments & agencies).

On Pausing / Stopping All Federal Grant & Loan Activity

Here’s 1 of 2 screenshots on some of the money stuff —

Invite Us To Talk To Your Group About Civic Options For Driving Pressure

Shift the Country is a nonprofit promoting uncommon civic action approaches to increase public pressure, to drive change, and to navigate disruption. We speak to groups about this stuff. We can speak to groups by Zoom or similar this week or next with a bit of lead time. This is a pretty big emergency and we’d like to help increase pressure where we can.

Shift the Country just finished a 5-week “Big Chaos Preparedness” Zoom series. We’ll start something similar this week or next; especially given these new developments. We’re brainstorming with volunteers this week on ways forward. If you’d like to do that too, click on the “Do a call to talk options” button.

Be well and be safe.