Showing the same reasoning skills as a toddler under a blanket who thinks you can’t see them if they can’t see you, the Trump administration has decided that, if it just deletes references to laws, those laws will magically no longer apply.
There’s really no other way to explain the recent deletion of references to the 2019 Government Employee Fair Treatment Act—signed into law by President Donald Trump himself—mandating back pay for furloughed federal workers.
Demonstrators rally in support of federal workers outside of the Department of Health and Human Services in February.
Yes, the Office of Management and Budget figured that, if it removed references to the law from its FAQ, then there would be no impediments to stiffing federal employees.
The Sept. 30 version of the guidance actually highlighted the law, saying that it meant that workers would be “paid retroactively as soon as possible after the lapse ends, regardless of scheduled pay dates.”
That version is now gone from OMB’s website, but GovExec, which first noticed the change, has preserved a copy. The new version, dated Oct. 3, omits any reference to that law but is otherwise the same. But because everything in this administration is in shambles, they appear to have forgotten to give the memory hole treatment to the longer OMB shutdown document, which still states that furloughed workers will be paid.
To be fair, it’s probably pretty tough for Trump to keep track of every law that he’s openly violating.
After GovExec noticed the change on Monday, it reached out to the White House for comment, which is likely what led to the Tuesday report that the administration is developing “guidance” that basically says that the law doesn’t exist or apply.
The Trump administration also just recently removed information from the Treasury Department website regarding an 1866 law saying that no living person can appear on currency, making way for plans to mint an incredibly ugly Trump coin.
But since the internet is forever, you can still find that information on the Wayback Machine, where you can see that the Treasury Department memory-holed an entire detailed history of the Treasury itself, simply to hide a passing reference to that law.
Masterful gambit, sir! Surely the law doesn’t exist now.
Oh, wait… there it is. Still law, still findable.
Also in classic shambolic fashion, while they’ve messily tried to delete reference to the 1866 law, they’re also saying that the Trump coin is totally fine because they’re following a different law, the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020. So there. Take that, losers.
But there’s one small problem: That law also doesn’t allow for images of people to appear on the reverse side of those types of coins, which wouldn’t allow Trump’s whole raised-fist thing.
This is pure buffoonery—just swift, stupid moves meant to cover up their flailing. But the administration’s project of deletion is much more comprehensive, including removing online health guidelines, hiding jobs reports, and deleting spending databases.
Trump knows that actual data and laws undermine his entire project, which relies on disinformation being the only thing you see. But while he has the power to bury things like spending data and jobs numbers, it’s a little harder to delete actual laws.
Well, for now, anyway.
