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He looks a little like Il Duche

Lil Douche you say?

My thoughts exactly, with maybe a sprinkling of Al Capone:

The Democrats have gone out of their way plenty to chill dissent and actively expand the police state, but let’s see how this budget discussion goes. Besides their own nefarious actions abroad with the wars and persecution of journalists and whistleblowers and whatnot, I see the myriad of inventive ways the Democrats use to “steal defeat from the jaws of victory”, and this forms a clear composite picture of deliberate collaboration. That could change, but right now I see both political parties playing “good cop/bad cop”, both political parties intent on normalizing paramilitary secret police in the streets.

The last time federal workers went on strike, Reagan fired every air traffic controller. We're still trying to recover from THAT, 40 years on.

I know people involved in some of these unions. They still fight for federal workers and are successful at times in assisting them with so many other things. They negotiate contracts (like collective bargaining agreements) and seek more fair workplace practices, they represent workers in disputes, they scrutinize HR and administrative practices, and they bring lawsuits in federal courts.

Yes, they don't have the teeth of large strikes, but it's still helping them in the sense of banding together and pooling resources. Of course, this fucking piece of shit administration has just unilaterally taken away a lot of things and exposed a lot of the flaws in the system. From what I know, morale is in the shitter for most normal, everyday, civilian federal workers who simply wanted to provide a good public service and pay their bills.

Note that I think it being illegal to strike is fundamentally un-constitutional and un-American. But hey, not much of the U.S. is how we feel it should be.

The only purpose of police unions is to come out in solidarity when one of their own fucks up. Like if a teacher's union rallied around the teacher every time they were accused of inappropriate contact with a student. The union would back the teacher and besmirch the student. That's how law enforcement unions work in the U.S.

I don't know if this ever happened and I only have experience as a government contractor. I think ICE and CBP might have different rules, but...

The "loophole" to strike is if and only if the union can't reach an agreement on terms to extend their CBA then there is no legal requirement to not strike. Meaning if the negotiations go sideways and the other side isn't negotiating in good faith as far as raises, healthcare, PTO, etc then the union members can vote to not accept the CBA. if the CBA ends so does the obligation to not strike.

Unions can strike. Unions of critical services workers, like air traffic control and police, can not legally. This is the first time I read that federal employees can not.

Unions can still be useful, even if their most powerful tool is taken away.

Yeah, except the clean Wehrmacht myth was also primarily about pardoning generals and officers, not protecting rank and file soldiers.