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Efforts to hollow out the federal workforce by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have resulted in a dramatic rise in layoff announcements. The latest monthly data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas shows that employers in the United States announced more than 172,000 layoffs during February, which was an increase of 245% from January and the highest monthly total since mid-2020, during the pandemic. Further, it was the highest number of layoffs for the month of February since 2009, in the middle of the financial crisis and subsequent Great Recession, when more than 186,000 layoffs were announced. So far, through the first two months of the year, employers have cut a total of 222,000 jobs, an increase of 33% over last year. Which industries have been hardest hit? DOGE’s slashing of the federal governments head count meant a huge increase in government layoffs. In fact, through February, the report notes that 62,530 government jobs have been eliminated, which was an increase of 41,311% year-over-year. Meanwhile, the retail and technology sectors continue to see significant cuts. Further, almost 39,000 jobs were lost in the retail sector, 14,554 in technology, and 13,804 in the services and consumer products sector during February. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r
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President Donald Trump appears to have backed off issuing an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education on Thursday, but is expected to do so soon, according to multiple reports including from the Wall Street Journal and NPR, who have seen a draft version and confirmed the details. The news comes a day after Linda McMahon was installed as the new education secretary, following her recent Senate confirmation. Here’s what you need to know. What is happening at the Department of Education? Dismantling the department has been a long time coming. In recent months, Trump has attacked it, calling it “a big con job,” while the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has slashed dozens of contracts; placed dozens of others on administrative leave; targeted its diversity programs; and gutted the Institute of Education Sciences, where many employees have been fired or suspended. Trump is all but guaranteed to face legal challenges, because only Congress can abolish federal agencies, and the administration’s push is just another example of how Trump is trying to cross the boundaries of his actual presidential power. Meanwhile, advocates and congressional leaders have been mounting a pushback campaign, including Republicans, whose districts rely heavily on federal funding from the Education Department. Educators, along with members of Congress, are also worried about what will happen to the department’s billions of dollars meant for our nation’s students and schools. So what does the Department of Education do anyway? Simply put, the Department of Education distributes billions of federal dollars to colleges and schools, and manages the federal government’s student loan portfolio. It also maintains and regulates vital services for our nation’s students, guaranteeing an education to low-income, homeless, and disabled kids, per the Associated Press. The department is the smallest cabinet-level agency, with around 4,500 employees. Polls show more than 60% of Americans oppose eliminating it. Interestingly, a majority of public K-12 school funding comes from the states, or locally, with only about 14% from federal funds. Universities and colleges, for their part, depend mostly on the department’s dollars for student financial aid and research grants, which have also been halted. Trump has tied the funding to his own political agenda, threatening to cut off federal money to all institutions that teach what he calls critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content, and favoring those who support his school choice programs and ending teacher tenure.
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E-Commerce
Ironically enough, a divisive moment in the Oval Office last weekend seems to have brought the entire internet together. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the White House on February 28, ostensibly to hammer out plans for a peace agreement between his country and Russia, he probably didnt expect to get berated by both Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. The ensuing, historically fiery exchange appeared to catch him off guard. Similarly, most people watching the spectacle play out on live TV were probably not expecting Vances role in the meeting to explode into a meteor shower of memes among people of all political stripes. But thats exactly what has happened. Have you said thank you once https://t.co/kCNfr59RAn pic.twitter.com/01mm34xg1u— New Liberals (@CNLiberalism) March 1, 2025 Anyone wandering around X at just about any moment this week is bound to come across images of Vances boyish face enhanced to look cartoonishly cherubic. (The surrounding beard adds a perverse dissonance.) The meme pokes fun at how petulant some say Vance came across by getting angry at Zelenskyy for his apparently insufficient gratitude over U.S. aid, which Vance himself had nothing to do with. The archetypal version features an altered Vance sitting smugly in the Oval Office, with the caption: You have to say pwease and tank you, Mistow Zensky. As a result, the word pwease is now so associated with both the Zelenskyy meeting and the meme that followed, some X users now refer to Vance as the pwease guy. The origins of the JD Vance meme actually predate the doomed Zelenskyy meeting by many months. It began last October, when Republican Congressman Mike Collins tweeted a photo of Vance that had been digitally altered in a flattering way. X users noticed the yassified portrait and responded by going in another, decidedly less-flattering direction. With ever-weirder alterations to images of Vances face last fall, the kindling for the pwease meme spread around the firepit of the internet. All it took was Vance going aggro in the Oval Office to light a match underneath it. For every 100 likes I will turn JD Vance into a progressively apple cheeked baby pic.twitter.com/WgGS9IhAfY— 7/11 Truther (@DaveMcNamee3000) October 2, 2024 Throughout this past week, the JD Vance meme continued to evolve, branching out into stranger spaces. It now includes pop culture figures such as Pennywise, the clown from It; the Teletubbies; and the oafish village boy holding a lollipop in Shrek Forever After, along with political leaders including Kim Jong Un, but also increasingly esoteric and abstract variations. (Vance as Las Vegass The Sphere, anyone?) However, what may be most strange about the memewhich has gotten so ubiquitous, many now claim to have forgotten what Vances actual face looks likeis its bipartisan appeal. Obviously, left-leaning social media users are into infantilizing the vice president. Not only is it a chance to mock the opposition, but an indirect way to show support for Ukraine in their war with Russia. Its no wonder popular accounts like the anti-Trump media group Meidas Touch and even The Daily Show have gotten in on the action. Less obvious is why Vances supporters are also into it. Polymarket, a MAGA-friendly, Peter Thiel-backed betting platform, has put Vance memes in multiple tweets throughout the weekand many of the vice presidents fans suspect the hyper-online Vance is enjoying his own memedom. (At least one reporters account backs that up.) actually i think its good that people are making me look insane is a very funny way to play this https://t.co/IYHs4Q4hql pic.twitter.com/CJ0eC3NKZW— rat king (@MikeIsaac) March 6, 2025 Its unclear exactly why the online right has embraced a meme targeting one of its own. The most generous explanation is that theyre still ebullient from last Novembers victory, and secure enough in their partys current dominance to admit these images are funny. Another possibility is that the 4Chan-bred, meme-savvy faction of Trumps base never much cared for Vanceeither because of his former resistance to Trump or for more disgusting reasonsand are happy to throw him under the bus for the sake of some lulz. Some X users, however, claim their embrace of the JD Vance meme is a way to neutralize the lefts use of it. If Vances supporters are also in on the joke, the logic suggests, they cant also be stung by it. (As when liberals repurposed the Biden-bashing Lets Go, Brandon into the Dark Brandon meme.) While some X denizens seem pleased that the meme is bringing both sides together, others seem to see it as a zero-sum meme war. When the Never Trump conservative PAC, the Lincoln Project, tweeted Weird Vance after Tuesday nights congressional address, one user responded, Its only funny when we do it, and added a slur for good measure.
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E-Commerce
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