For those who haven’t heard about it from my fediverse or LinkedIn posting: I was fired by DOGE last Friday from my role at the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) overseeing information security for VA.gov, despite the fact that everyone I worked for and with at VA considered my role there critical, wanted me to stay, and communicated that fact to DOGE repeatedly.
I was interviewed about this yesterday by Boston Herald reporter Lance Reynolds, and his article is out today (archive.today link). The article is very good. Nearly every time I read a news article about something I’m expert in I’m amazed by how many mistakes the reporter makes, but Reynolds gets just about everything right. I emailed him and acknowledged the accuracy of the article and thanked him for it.
The only quibble I have is this: Reynolds says in the article that the Trump administration had secured a court ruling upholding its authority to conduct these firings. I don’t think that’s quite right. As far as I know, the only ruling issued so far on this question said that the people who brought the lawsuit lacked standing to do so. I.e., the ruling didn’t say the firings were legal, it said the specific people who challenged them weren’t allowed to. As far as I know, no court has ruled yet on the merits of their claims.
The Boston Herald is a very right-wing newspaper and I hesitated before agreeing to give them an interview. I ultimately decided to do it—and looking at this article, it was obviously the right decision!—for three reasons:
- I looked at past articles written by this report and they were good.
- Although the opinion side at the Herald is pure MAGA shit, their hard news side has always been quite good, arguably even better than the “liberal” Boston Globe’s.
- It’s important for the Herald’s readers (which includes a lot of veterans) to hear the truth about what’s going on, so I decided some risk was worth taking to try to get the message out.
Here’s the article in today’s print edition of the Herald, with a different headline:
