Category: Notes from the Field
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A judge used the word “censorship.” She was describing a government agency.
Notes from the Field — Dispatch, June 12, 2026 On June 12, a federal judge did something rare: she used the government’s own conduct to define the word the government had spent a year avoiding. U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley of the District of Massachusetts ordered the Trump administration to restore exhibits, signs, and educational…
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A welder gets $880,000. A director gets $65 billion. Both stories ran the same week.
Notes from the Field — Dispatch, June 12, 2026 Three companies made news the same week for opposite reasons, and the reasons were the same reason. I. THE PRODUCT GROWS. THE PAYROLL DOESN’T. Salesforce cut 86 jobs in California in early June — its third round of layoffs in roughly nine months, hitting sales, administrative,…
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The trust fund and the tax base are the same number, counted twice.
Notes from the Field — Dispatch, June 9, 2026 Two clocks. One year: 2031. That was the last dispatch’s argument. This week, one of those two clocks moved. On June 9, the Social Security Trustees released their 2026 report. The program’s main retirement trust fund is now projected to run dry in late 2032, one…
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The Career Service
Notes from the Field — Dispatch, June 4, 2026 The civil service protections that cover most federal employees were not created to protect the employees. They were created to protect the government’s work from the employees’ employers. The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 ended the spoils system that had governed federal employment since…
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The Glitch
Notes from the Field — Dispatch, June 3, 2026 The Australian government’s admission came at Senate estimates on June 3, in the flat language of bureaucratic disclosure: the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations said that approximately 300,000 Centrelink payments had been illegally cancelled between 2020 and 2024, due to a glitch in the automated…
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The Board’s Authority
Notes from the Field — Dispatch, June 1, 2026 The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is named for President Kennedy by act of Congress. The statute establishing the center says so plainly: Congress gave the center its name, and only Congress can change it. This was not, until recently, a point anyone needed to…
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Mid-Cycle
Notes from the Field — Dispatch, May 27, 2026 Redistricting in the United States is supposed to happen once a decade, after the census. The census counts people. The count determines how many House seats each state gets. Legislatures then draw the maps. The process has always been political — the party in power draws…
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The Grand Jury Room
Notes from the Field – June 21, 2026 The “Broadview Six” case did not fall apart because the prosecutors were bad lawyers. It fell apart because a federal judge read the grand jury transcripts and saw what was in them — and then noticed that the version submitted to her by the prosecutors had pages…
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Two Countries, One Diagnosis
Notes from the Field – May 25, 2026 In the same week in May 2026, two opinion pieces appeared in two countries about the same problem — and neither author knew the other was writing it. In the United States, political scientist Lee Drutman appeared in a New York Times opinion video with columnist Ezra…
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Lower-Value Human Capital
Notes from the Field – May 22, 2026 The executives who announced the layoffs didn’t use the same words by accident. They used them because the words are accurate. Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters, at an investor briefing in Hong Kong on May 19, announced the elimination of approximately 7,800 back-office jobs — more than…
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