To the Editor:
Re “Decide Says Trump Administration Memos Directing Mass Firings Have been Unlawful” (information article, nytimes.com, Feb. 27):
Maybe what emerges most clearly from the terribly excessive numbers of federal staff who’re being fired is that President Trump and Elon Musk merely don’t have any sense of them as human beings with precise lives. These individuals are not folks, they’re simply abstractions — numbers.
Given the billionaires who run the federal government now, this isn’t shocking, as a result of none of them have ever needed to deal with the sorts of points that every one of those fired individuals are going to have to handle. The place does the mortgage come from? What occurs to our well being care? How do I pay for meals?
Nor will they must expertise the inevitable penalties of the turmoil into which these sudden firings will throw households: home violence, divorce, poverty, suicide.
However Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk merely couldn’t care much less, as a result of they’ve by no means cared about anybody besides themselves, and all of their wants have been met.
Edward S. Harwood
New York
To the Editor:
Reflecting on my profession of 40-plus years within the company sector earlier than my retirement 15 years in the past, I’m horrified after I evaluate my expertise to that of the plight of presidency staff in simply the final month.
My former colleagues and I usually complained about deadlines, lengthy hours and ever-changing necessities. I believed that nothing may very well be extra jarring than the anxiousness of waking as much as headlines asserting that your organization was being acquired by one other entity — one you had been wholly unfamiliar with from one other a part of the world. You knew that you’d be pressured to audition to your job — once more — and that there can be job cuts and scary administration adjustments.
However by no means in these a long time did I observe the gleeful cruelty that this federal regime has unleashed in six lengthy weeks: waking as much as unsigned emails suggesting that you simply sum up your job, your price, in a number of phrases or face termination or bogus buyout presents.
Much more disturbing was a public message geared toward a complete authorities work drive accusing staff of laziness, malfeasance and whining.
Treating our loyal, sincere, devoted authorities work drive on this method have to be referred to as out for what it’s: easy cruelty by the hands of billionaires who ought to by no means have the facility to hurl unsubstantiated accusations and rumors to tens of millions of fine folks simply attempting to do a day’s work.
Weaponizing cruelty and uncertainty towards authorities staff doesn’t enhance effectivity, lower your expenses or enhance productiveness. It’s the lowest type of administration doable and can solely make us much less secure and fewer safe, and unfold anxiousness to all Individuals as authorities applications are eradicated or rendered ineffective or harmful.
No matter your private work scenario, ask your self how nicely you’d fare underneath these working situations, and is that this the federal government we wish?
Karen Fetty
Hudson, N.Y.
To the Editor:
What a smoke display screen. Your complete train of slashing authorities jobs and contracts has to do with affording sufficient cash for the tax cuts for the wealthy. That’s all. Additional, in the event that they and their company lackeys simply paid their justifiable share, none of this might be vital.
We have to shout this from the rooftops. This train is a rip-off, visited on powerless American people who find themselves ready and hoping for the courts to catch as much as all of the malfeasance earlier than it’s too late.
Elizabeth Smith
Bellingham, Wash.
To the Editor:
As a taxpayer, I’m outraged by the waste exhibited by the firing of our most senior and skilled federal staff. Cease.
Lisa Orton
Los Altos Hills, Calif.
What’s Finest for Afghanistan? Not the Taliban.
To the Editor:
Re “The U.S. Can No Longer Ignore the Risk Arising in Afghanistan,” by Javid Ahmad (Opinion visitor essay, nytimes.com, Feb. 17):
In encouraging “pragmatic” engagement with the Taliban, Mr. Ahmad fleetingly alludes to the Taliban’s system of gender apartheid after which goes on to argue for an method that places “outcomes over beliefs.”
Mr. Ahmed is simply repeating what we ladies of Afghanistan have been instructed repeatedly — that we should put our plight on the again burner whereas different priorities deemed extra urgent, like counterterrorism and counternarcotics operations, are pursued. We skilled this firsthand on the third United Nations Doha Convention in June 2024, the place ladies weren’t granted a seat on the desk and girls’s rights weren’t on the agenda.
We ladies from Afghanistan have been crystal clear in our calls for for the way in which ahead: no engagement with out the Taliban assembly sure key benchmarks on ladies’s rights, together with the overturning of direct decrees that prohibit these rights.
Whereas Mr. Ahmed argues for pragmatic engagement, ladies have referred to as for principled engagement and argued in opposition to any steps that might normalize Taliban rule. With out these bulwarks, state engagement with the Taliban, together with america, will serve solely to bolster our systematic domination and oppression.
This isn’t the primary time that males have talked about ladies’s rights whereas forging forward on a path that marginalizes our voices and calls for, mimicking the Taliban’s erasure of us and our voices from all facets of life.
The worldwide group ought to heart ladies’s voices and management and make sure that ladies’s rights usually are not subverted to allow the targets of imperialism however fairly on the forefront of the technique to carry peace and democracy to Afghanistan.
Metra Mehran
Falls Church, Va.
The author is a ladies’s rights activist and coverage adviser to the Finish Gender Apartheid Marketing campaign.
To the Editor:
Javid Ahmad is correct about one factor: Afghanistan shouldn’t be ignored anymore. A lot of his concepts, nevertheless, struck lots of the outdated, drained platitudes of the previous. Viewing Afghanistan via the prism of a menace ignores 4 a long time of failed American-led insurance policies there. Take heed to Afghans who stay there and heart their wants, fairly than these in Washington who don’t have our greatest pursuits at coronary heart.
Diplomacy with unsavory actors ought to by no means be dominated out, however Mr. Ahmad ignores President Trump’s deal-making within the area previously, which could have been constructive for him politically however was in reality horrible for the Afghan and American folks alike.
All negotiations require companions you’ll be able to belief, however each the Taliban and President Trump have proven that for now, the most effective coverage for america is perhaps to do no hurt.
Arash Azizzada
Brooklyn
The author is the chief director of Afghans for a Higher Tomorrow.
