Entrenched Federal Bureaucracy Uses “Malicious Compliance” to Shame Trump and DOGE Over Job Cuts
I’ve seen a lot of insane stories from the mainstream media in my time but one of them that absolutely takes the cake is one from the Washington Post on the job cuts that hit the National Park Service this week.
The headline blared “Long lines and canceled rentals: Firings bring chaos to national parks,” the subheadline read “Trump’s purge of federal employees is already harming the visitor experience at national parks across the country.” Right off the bat, we know this is going to be your typical MSM doom and gloom story about how actions taken by the Trump administration have allegedly been harmful to America.
In it, we learned right off the bat that there was only one employee among all Yosemite National Park employees who had access to the keys and that he was relied upon to rescue people from, among other things, getting locked in bathrooms:
At California’s Yosemite National Park, the Trump administration fired the only locksmith on staff on Friday. [Nate Vince] was the sole employee with the keys and the institutional knowledge needed to rescue visitors from locked restrooms.[…]Yosemite, which is roughly the size of Rhode Island, has hundreds of locked buildings and gates. Sometimes visitors get locked inside vault toilets or restrooms. Sometimes employees get locked out of their houses in the middle of the night.“We have a federal court, administrative buildings, toilets, closets, gun safes,” said Vince, who started working as a permanent employee at the park in March after four years as a seasonal employee. “We have endless things that need to be secured in various forms, and I’m the sole keeper of those keys, the one that makes the keys, the one that fixes the locks, installs the locks, and has all that knowledge of the security behind the park. And so it’s a critical role. And without it, everyone else in the park is handicapped.”
In almost every story you read about the cuts being made to federal agencies, there is a heavy emphasis on how essential those being let go allegedly are. For example, this one from the Associated Press made sure to quote advocacy groups on how the cuts would supposedly impact the American people:
“Fewer staff means shorter visitor center hours, delayed openings and closed campgrounds,″ said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy group.Trash will pile up, restrooms won’t be cleaned, and maintenance problems will grow, she predicted. Guided tours will be cut back or canceled and, in the worst cases, public safety could be at risk.
In many articles, critics of the DOGE cuts to the federal workforce follow the same script: these people are vital to your safety, well-being, and everyday life, and you will be inconvenienced and could face safety issues if they are let go. Further, there is a concern implied in the news reports about the futures of the employees that you don’t often see when private sector layoffs are announced:
If you’re thinking “This messaging sounds suspiciously coordinated,” you’re not far off the mark. It’s part of what is known as “malicious compliance,” where the entrenched bureaucracy makes strategic decisions on who gets fired and what services become limited to draw the media into shaming lawmakers and other leaders on Capitol Hill to reverse course.
It’s something we saw happen in 2013 during the Obama administration:
Previously, it was known as “Washington Monument Syndrome”:
The “malicious compliance” term was used a lot on the Twitter/X machine in response to the absurd WaPo story about the locksmith:
We’ve also seen malicious compliance over the last month in other ways:
And it was more or less admitted by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that some of their firings were part of a deliberate strategy:
Plus, coming soon to the DoD?
And some final thoughts:
Choose? I say both.
-Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter/X.-
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