There Are Many Different Kinds of Love, Brethren Arise, Candlepower, Cylinder Five, God Be With You Till We Meet Again, I Am Running Down the…, I Dont See the Branches I See the Leaves, I Want to Fall in Love on Snapchat, Out of the Skies Under the Earth, Take off and Shoot A Zero, The House Glows with Almost No Help, There Are Many Different Kinds of Love, all by Chris Zabriskie are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...) Source: http://chriszabriskie.com/vendaface/ Artist: http://chriszabriskie.com/
Recently released state school ratings reveal that five Texas school districts are at risk of a takeover by the Texas Education Agency (TEA)—the most since a 2017 state law expanded the state’s takeover powers. The new ratings cover the 2022-23 school year, released in April following legal delays, and the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years, released last month. One Fort Worth ISD school received its fifth consecutive failing rating for 2022-23. Schools in Beaumont, Connally, Wichita Falls, and Lake Worth ISDs, which have a total of 32,000 students, all received a fifth consecutive failing grade for the 2024-25 school year.
Some parents in Fort Worth have already organized to fend off a takeover: Zach Leonard, a parent of three children in the district, told the Texas Observer he does not want Fort Worth to lose its elected leadership and staff the way Houston ISD has under its 2023 takeover and the state-appointed leadership of superintendent Mike Miles. “It’s not a sustainable model for the future. It’s not true education. It’s just test prep,” Leonard said. “Fort Worth ISD has room to improve, but we can do it our way, and we don’t have to do it the way that TEA is prescribing.”
In the past decade and a half, 13 districts have been taken over and run by a state-appointed board of managers, under public-school accountability laws which have empowered TEA to step in and depose an elected school board if its schools do not meet academic, governance, or financial accountability standards. In 2017, the state made it easier for TEA to intervene by allowing the agency to take over an entire school district if just one school receives failing ratings for five consecutive ratings.
An Observer analysis of school ratings at those districts before and after TEA takeovers reveals that, while some districts have recently reduced their number of failing schools under state control, others racked up more failing schools and even ended their time under state control by being gobbled up by other districts.
“You’re getting people that they’re putting in there to sabotage everything that we were trying to do.”
The state agency currently controls Houston ISD as well as four smaller school districts because of governance issues or consecutive failing ratings at one or more schools. Four of those districts have shown some progress in their state scores, 2024-25 data shows. After eight years of TEA control, Marlin ISD, near Waco, received no F or D ratings this past school year and will return to full local control in January 2026. In East Texas, Shepherd ISD’s three F-rated schools improved to D-rated schools in the five years under state takeover. And for the first time since the A-F system began in 2017, Houston ISD had no F ratings last school year. South San Antonio ISD, which TEA took over due to governance issues in February 2025, also had fewer failing schools in 2025 than 2024.
But other school districts that were subject to TEA control in the past reported more problems following takeovers, based on the agency’s own metrics for academic performance, records show. Four out of eight districts where state takeovers have ended were dissolved entirely: North Forest, La Marque, Kendleton, and Wilmer Hutchins ISDs were all shut down and absorbed into other school districts. One of those districts, North Forest, was absorbed into Houston ISD, itself now taken over.
Two other districts returned to local control with more failing schools than before: Beaumont and Edgewood ISDs, which had been taken over for governance or financial accountability issues. In the case of Edgewood, taken over for failure to hire a superintendent, the number of failing schools increased from one to 10. In the two remaining cases, the results were better: Southside ISD, taken over for financial accountability reasons, had no failing schools pre- or post-TEA, and El Paso ISD, taken over for a state test cheating scandal, emerged with fewer failing schools.
When presented with the Observer’s findings, TEA spokesperson Jake Kobersky suggested TEA is not responsible for the outcome of state takeovers. “The agency does not ‘take control’ or manage the operations of school districts,” he said. “In the event a Board of Managers is appointed, the locally appointed board members and the district administration, consistent with the operating structure of districts statewide, make all operational and curricular decisions—not TEA,” Kobersky wrote, clarifying in a separate email that “locally appointed” referred to the state “appointing board members from the local community.” Kobersky continued: “Classifying the district as being under agency leadership is an incorrect characterization and would mislead your readers.”
Kobersky emphasized that TEA removed the elected boards at Edgewood and Beaumont ISDs mainly because of financial and governance issues, not academic issues. Though school ratings slipped, he noted that the percentage of all Beaumont ISD students who met overall standards at their grade level was only 30 percent when the takeover began, and it remained the same afterward. In Edgewood, a district in west San Antonio that was the center of a historic 1989 court ruling on school finance equity, the percentage of all district students who met grade level increased from 24 to 29 percent, Kobersky said.
In the first year of the state takeover at Edgewood, TEA’s appointed board of managers named Emilio Castro as superintendent. But Castro resigned only two years later, after a district employee accused him of sexual harassment. Timothy Payne, who served as an appointed board manager from 2016 to 2019, told the Observer the board then selected TEA’s recommended replacement—Eduardo Hernández, a former Chief of Schools for Duncanville ISD, though Hernández had no prior experience as a superintendent.
By 2019, Hernández pushed for private operation of some campuses under a state law that allows school districts to hand over their schools to private charter operators or public university programs in exchange for extra funding and a break from state sanctions. The district inked private partnerships with four operators to run eight elementary, middle, or high schools. But only one of those schools, run by Ridgeline Education Corporation, received passing ratings in the 2024-25 school year. Winston Intermediate School of Excellence, which was operated by the Texas A&M San Antonio Institute for School and Community Partnerships, closed following the 2023-24 school year, after receiving a F rating.
Payne blames TEA for the district’s declining ratings. “TEA is the problem,” he said. “You’re getting people that they’re putting in there to sabotage everything that we were trying to do.”
Kobersky, the TEA spokesman, reiterated that it was the state-appointed Board of Managers, not TEA, who hired Hernández as Edgewood ISD superintendent.
Edgewood ISD parents have now collected 200 signatures for a petition that demands a performance review for Hernández and more transparency on academic performance, school discipline, teacher vacancies, and district spending. Edgewood parent Jessica Martinez told the Observer that her sons’ school—Gus Garcia Middle School, another campus run by the Texas A&M program—has had a different principal each year her kids have attended and that substitute teachers are running classes “all year round.”
Henrietta Muñoz, the CEO of the Texas A&M program, told the Observer via email that staffing shortages are a statewide concern and that the state ratings “highlight areas for continued improvement” but do “not fully reflect” the accomplishments made at the school. A spokesman for Edgewood ISD did not respond to the Observer’s request for comment.
Protesters against the Houston ISD takeover (Courtesy of Community Voices for Public Education)
During its TEA takeover, from 2014 to 2020, Beaumont ISD saw its number of failing schools increase from four to eight. Right before the takeover ended, the district contracted with nonprofit charter operators to run three schools. The district terminated these partnerships in 2023 after all three received F ratings, then turned them over to another charter operator—Third Future Schools, a school network founded by Miles, now the Houston superintendent—which in turn ended its partnership with the district last school year, reverting control to the Beaumont ISD. Only one of the former Third Future Schools partnership campuses in Beaumont ISD received a passing rating in 2024-25. One of those three campuses, Fehl-Price Elementary, received its fifth consecutive failing rating, putting the district at risk of yet another takeover.
Thomas Sigee, who joined the Beaumont ISD board as an elected trustee in 2019 and is now the board chair, previously told the Observer that TEA directed the board’s selection of private partners: “We chose charter schools based on what TEA told us we could use,” Sigee said. But Kobersky, the TEA spokesman, countered that districts have always been in charge of selecting operators: “The decision-making authority has always rested with the district.”
Sigee told the Observer the district has not yet received any information from TEA regarding whether Beaumont will face another takeover. He said the district would close Fehl-Price and transfer its students to another school if needed to avoid state control. Until then, he said, “We will continue to educate the students in BISD.”
Epic Systems, the largest electronic health records company in the US, is pushing users of its ubiquitous online health portal MyChart to sign away their rights to sue the company if it mishandles their sensitive information.
Epic is currently facing an antitrust lawsuit from a rival health records company for allegedly holding a monopoly. (Kendall Warner / The Virginian-Pilot / Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
The next time patients log into the near-universal online health portal MyChart, they will be pushed to sign away their ability to sue the parent company if it mishandles their sensitive health information.
Epic Systems — the largest electronic health records company in the country and owner of MyChart — is rolling out a new terms-of-service agreement that includes binding arbitration language and a class-action waiver. These clauses compel patients to forfeit their legal right to band together in class-action lawsuits and instead direct them into a private court system, known as arbitration, where they face slim chances of winning their cases.
The new MyChart terms-of-service update comes at a time when the nation’s largest health insurance company, UnitedHealth Group, is facing numerous class-action lawsuits from consumers and physicians for a 2024 ransomware attack resulting in a massive breach of patient data. By slipping these new clauses into its terms of service, Epic could be attempting to avoid the same onslaught of litigation if it faces its own data breach or internal malfunctions, which large-scale institutions are particularly susceptible to.
Patients can still use MyChart if they don’t sign the agreement, but they will only be able to access a downgraded version with limited features. Epic is likely banking on most users accepting the updates without consideration; a 2017 Deloitte survey reportedly found that 91 percent of US consumers sign terms and conditions without reading them.
In recent decades, many corporations have slipped arbitration provisions into their agreements with workers and consumers to shield themselves from legal accountability for damages ranging from defective products to wage theft and antitrust violations.
The arbitration courts that oversee the resulting legal matters have been criticized for a variety of practices that tilt the playing field in favor of corporate defendants over class-action plaintiffs, the latter of which have been found to lose in arbitration upward of 76 percent of the time. Critics contend this is primarily because of an inherent conflict of interest: these private judges are employed by arbitration firms that work at the behest of their corporate clients.
However, a recent court ruling could expose Epic’s arbitration agreement to legal challenges. A judge in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Ticketmaster’s arbitration clause, in part because the firm’s market power over ticketing meant consumers had no other alternative and therefore were unable to voluntarily accept the contract.
Epic’s software manages the electronic health records for around 80 percent of the US population, and MyChart is used across 39 percent of all hospital systems, making its services virtually ubiquitous.
Epic is, in fact, currently facing an antitrust lawsuit from a rival health records company for allegedly holding a monopoly. That market power makes Epic’s binding arbitration agreement practically unavoidable.
This article was first published by the Lever, an award-winning independent investigative newsroom.
Abraham Lincoln is often invoked in calls for civility and reconciliation across the partisan divide. But Lincoln himself understood that such reconciliation was impossible in his own time until justice had been served and slavery abolished.
What made Abraham Lincoln great was that he understood that, in the end, there would be no establishment of the rule of law until justice had been served and slavery abolished. (Ed Vebell / Getty Images)
I understand the impulse, at moments like these, for politicians and public spokespersons to say that we need to talk across the divide, to acknowledge our similarities amid our differences, that we need leaders who understand there is no red America, no blue America, just America. It’s not my way of writing or speaking, but it runs deep in our political tradition. So it’s not surprising that people would turn to it.
Looking for precedents, people will often invoke Abraham Lincoln, particularly his first and second inaugural addresses (or least the conciliatory part of the second). The leader who bound up our wounds, who bore malice toward none and charity for all.
But Lincoln is an instructive case for a different reason. And that is that despite starting his career issuing bromides for peace and reconciliation, he came to understand, as time went on, a rather different alliance between words and deeds, toleration and power, reconciliation and reality.
From a young age — specifically, when he was twenty-eight years old, long before he came to national prominence — Lincoln had an uncanny sense that the growing violence of Jacksonian America was caught up with the question of slavery and abolition. In 1838, he delivered a fascinating address to the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois, where he meditated on the growing predilection for violence, both political and apolitical, and offered cautionary words about where things were headed. Despite his keen understanding of the roots of the violence and its direction, the best counsel Lincoln could offer at this point was that all Americans needed to recommit themselves to the rule of law and the Constitution. Otherwise, he warned, some Napoleon Bonaparte type would come along and do one of two terrible things: free the enslaved or enslave the free. Despite his opposition to slavery, in other words, Lincoln’s recommendation at this point was for people to gird their loins of lawfulness against the truly violent: the abolitionists and enslavers. Both sides do it; we, in the middle, must not.
What made Lincoln great was not that early speech, though it’s interesting and prophetic in all sorts of ways that I can’t do justice to here. Nor was it his later giving into some bloodthirsty militarism during the Civil War, though there are moments of holy violence in his second inaugural that still send shivers up my spine and that I cannot read aloud without my throat seizing up and my voice cracking.
No, what made Lincoln great was that he understood that, in the end, there would be no establishment of the rule of law until justice had been served and slavery abolished. There could be no refusal of violence that would stick, that would be anything more than the blandest sanctimony, the emptiest piety, until the underlying social violence — the combination of the “Negro question” and the “labor question” — was resolved, through concerted action by the state.
What makes today’s calls for reconciliation and pleas for recognition of everyone’s humanity so formulaic, even feckless, is that they are severed from any sort of action or social awareness. At best, they rest on a studied inattention to the underlying social and economic roots of the problem. At this point, the politicians who speak this way sound like the very abolitionists who were rightly derided as crackpot utopians for their naive belief that moral suasion, without state action, could somehow win the day against slavery.
The difference is that those abolitionists had no power. Many of these politicians do.
In brief: Mainly quiet, pollen-ridden weather through tomorrow in Houston, followed up by more scattered-type showers and storms Sunday through Tuesday. A cold front that’s more like a humidity front continues to look plausible around midweek next week. The tropics remain quiet for us.
Today & Saturday
Our late summer slog continues with hot days, warmer than normal nights, and generally high humidity (though at times it feels decent outside at least). Isolated showers are possible today, and we may see isolated to scattered showers or a thunderstorm tomorrow. Overall, nothing too bad. Temperatures will be in the low-90s for highs.
An ozone action day is in effect again today. For most people this will not be an issue, but for those of you in sensitive groups, try to avoid being outside except early and late in the day. Also, for those of you (like me) that have had the sniffles lately, there’s a good chance that ragweed is the culprit.
Scattered showers and thunderstorms should be the name of the game beginning Sunday. While this will still be a patchwork type rain setup, a few more folks should begin to participate each afternoon. Expect continued highs in the low-90s but perhaps some slightly cooler afternoons at times due to the showers. Lows will remain mostly in the 70s.
Wednesday front!?
Eric has mentioned the potential of a cool front next week, nothing spectacular but a potential notable change for a couple days. That remains very much on the table today. The timing is a bit suspect, but sometime in the Wednesday or Thursday timeframe, it appears that a weak front will drop south into the area, bringing the potential for scattered to numerous thunderstorms for a short time. Behind the front, we’d turn a little cooler and a lot less humid to close out the week.
European model forecast of dewpoint between next Tuesday and Friday morning. (Pivotal Weather)
You can see the European model forecast of dewpoint for midweek, showing a distinct drop in dewpoint levels on Wednesday evening into Thursday and Friday. This is more of a humidity front than a cold front, though the lower humidity should translate into a chance at widespread lows in the 60s by Friday morning perhaps. With the Autumnal Equinox on Monday afternoon, we do see signs of fall sprinkling the forecast.
Tropics
Gabrielle is slowly building in the Atlantic, but that’s where it will stay. Another wave behind Gabrielle has some development risk, but that also looks to stay in the Atlantic. Is there anything to focus on for Houston? Nothing specific. There’s a general trend, particularly with AI models to try to spin something up in the northwest Caribbean in about 10 days, but that’s not supported much in the traditional physics-based models.
Use the slider to compare the much more active Google Deep Mind AI model to the much quieter European ensemble for the week of September 29th. (Weathernerds.org)
So this will be a good test for AI modeling: Are they capable of “seeing” a tropical genesis risk earlier than traditional models. In truth, earlier this season, when AI models were quite a bit spicier than traditional models at genesis forecasts, they tended to fail the test. This may also be a case of AI modeling being overzealous for some reason, but it’s something we’ll watch at least. Only 2 known hurricanes have had legitimate hurricane impacts on the Houston area after next week: Jerry in 1989 that hit Galveston and a storm that took a similar track to Beryl from last year that hit in 1949. History is on our side after next week, but as always, we will continue to watch.
For the record, come October we are more likely to be impacted by remnants of Pacific storms that bring heavy rain risk than a direct impact from the Gulf. That can bring its own set of problems, so forecasters stay vigilant deep into October.
1. We’re supposed to do enneagrams at a company retreat
I work at an organization with 100+ employees. We gather periodically for company-wide retreats. We have done this in the past with various professional learning opportunities. This time we were asked to fill out an enneagram survey that would be facilitated in conversation about “what truly drives you and how to apply that to your job.” I find it to be mumbo jumbo and about as scientific as astrology. I took the quiz and found myself increasingly uncomfortable with the questions and rigor of the survey.
How can I share this with management? How can they create alternative options for those of us who do not want to participate in such a session? Am I totally off-base here in my discomfort with this in the work setting?
You’re not off-base; it’s pseudoscience. Some people don’t really care about that; they figure it’s the equivalent of a Buzzfeed quiz and they have fun with it without putting a ton of weight on the results or they find it an interesting tool for self-reflection. But it’s legitimate to dislike it and to be annoyed if your workplace is spending time on it and putting real weight on the results. Moreover, materials about the enneagram can have a religious slant (sometimes a Christian one, while other branches of Christianity strongly object to it — either way, a problem at work).
At a minimum, you should point out the religious angle and ask if people can opt out.
2. My employee’s posts on LinkedIn make me worried that he might be violating our company AI policy
I have a question about my responsibility as a manager when one of my direct reports may or may not be violating our company AI policy. Like a number of other companies, we have an internal instance of Microsoft Copilot enabled that keeps data internal, and are permitted to use it (but no external tools).
Recently, I saw a LinkedIn post from one of my direct reports (he added me as a connection when he started the job), talking about a number of generative AI tools he has been using. I know he has a lot of hobby code projects that are completely independent of his job (he posts about them on LinkedIn often), and of course he is allowed to use whatever tools he pleases for those. What gives me pause is that this post talks specifically about generative AI tools for data analysis, which is a core function of his job.
It’s impossible to tell from the post whether he is talking about a personal project or his work, but it could be about either — it was a description of how he likes to use certain tools. If he’s using it for work, it’s a violation of our AI policy, and he does work with patient data (deidentified, so no PHI, but still concerning). I don’t want to overstep and grill him over his LinkedIn activity if it’s just for a personal project, but the possibility that he may be using it for work is concerning.
As his manager, I feel like I have to do something, but what is the correct course of action? Do I start by asking him? Do I start by reaching out to our go-to person for the AI policy (who I do have a strong working relationship with) to ask for guidance?
In case it makes a difference, he also drops the ball quite frequently on some bureaucratic things. For example, he failed to reset his password when it was expiring because he thought that the email telling him to do so (from an internal IT email address) was spam. I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t realize that we have an AI policy, even though it is available on our intranet and must have been communicated when he started the job.
Just ask him! You didn’t go snooping and come across his mention of AI in a shady way; he connected to you on LinkedIn and posted it about there. You can just mention what you saw and ask about it: “I saw your post on LinkedIn talking about generative AI tools you’ve using. It’s pretty interesting! I did want to ask if you’re using any of them in your work here, and make sure you know the details of our policy on AI.”
3. Intern can’t shake hands with men
We had a grad practicum student in our office this summer, and she is Muslim (and wears a hijab) and tries not to touch men. This is easy to manage in our office, but during partnership events she found herself shaking some men’s hands even though it made her uncomfortable.
How I could have made these events smoother for her and our partners? Are there lines I could use while introducing her that indicate she prefers not to shake someone’s hand, or lines she could use herself? In the future, I would brief our partners quietly about it, but that’s not always possible. Our sector is very empathetic so no one will mind, but being junior and a minority led her to feel pretty awkward during these interactions regardless of whether she shook a man’s hand or politely declined to.
A lot of people who don’t shake hands for religious or other reasons develop a physical signal that deters the handshake while still conveying warmth (which, after all, is the point of the handshake, so a warm substitute really helps). A lot of religious people with this restriction will put their right hand over their heart and bow their head a little. If someone seems confused by that, they can say, “I don’t shake, but it’s lovely to meet you” (or “to see you” if they’ve met before).
If she’s going to do that, it will be easier if she does it with everyone, not just men. In a workplace setting, you really want to treat men and women the same, which means that if you have a restriction for one sex (whether it’s not shaking their hand or not being alone with them), it’s better to apply it to everyone.
4. What’s a professional way to say “it’s been one thing after another”?
It’s been a challenging few months, and I’m significantly behind at work. Things are starting to get better and I’m catching back up, but I have no idea what to say to people (if anything) about the communication delays and other dropped balls. My supervisor is in the loop, so this is more about communicating with coworkers and stakeholders.
In short, during a three- or four-month period, my tires were slashed three times (likely a hate crime but that’s not 100% clear), I bought a house for the first time (it ended up requiring some surprise repairs), I moved, and my pet died. Throughout these events, I seem to have consistently underestimated the level of physical and emotional exhaustion that would result, and the toll it would take overall. I took a lot of PTO, some planned and some not, and even while at work I was often distracted and not doing my best.
According to my supervisor, “this is the ebb and flow of life” but even if that’s true it seems rude to say that to people who have been inconvenienced by my “ebbing.” Citing “personal issues” seems too vague and open to interpretation, but I might be overthinking it.
Is there something quick and respectful I can say that doesn’t get into all the details but does somehow convey that I was Going Through Things But Now I’m Getting Back on Track? I feel “stuck” catching up on certain areas because I can’t figure out the first sentence for my extremely late email responses.
“I’m so sorry for the delay on this — I’ve been out quite a bit dealing with a situation that should be under control now. Let me get you the answers you were waiting on.” (Adjust last sentence to fit whatever the context is.)
Or: “I’m so sorry for the delay on this — I’ve needed to be out quite a bit so I’ve been in triage mode, and I apologize for not updating you.”
That’s it, truly! These options cover a whole variety of possibilities, shares the part that’s relevant, and is the right lead-in to whatever comes next (whether that’s getting the person info they’d asked for, figuring out next steps for a project, or so forth).
Investigators are still determining a cause of death for 20-year-old Jade McKissic. She had been reported missing on Sunday, according to the Houston Police Department.
“President Trump said networks giving him negative coverage may deserve to have their licenses revoked, ramping up threats administration officials have made in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing.” — Axios
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I really like free speech. I love it, some might say. I love how I get to say anything I want and it’s totally fine, no problem. I don’t like when you do that though. I only like when I do it, or when people do it in a way I told them to do it. That’s when I really like free speech. In fact, I like free speech so much that I’ve decided it’s just mine now—not yours.
I like so many things about free speech. I like that my friends on TV can say they want to kill homeless people and then keep showing up for work like nothing happened.
But when you make a joke at my expense? When you criticize me in any way? When you say anything other than a really nice compliment about me? That’s where I draw the line. I like free speech so much that I’d rather not share it with you anymore.
Come to think of it, why are we giving away speech at all in the first place? We should be able to make a good return on investment with speech, especially if it’s free to begin with. I bet a lot of people would pay good money to get some free speech. In fact, I like free speech so much, I’ve decided to charge for it.
Now, some people are saying that what I’ve just described isn’t free speech. Some people are saying that it’s free speech only if everyone gets to use it. But I don’t like the way you’re using it. The way you’re using it is hurting my feelings. The way you’re using it is making me worry I won’t get to become president of the United States a few more times.
You know what? I like free speech so much I’ve decided you can’t use it without my permission. I’ve decided free speech is a collector’s item and it should be kept in mint condition. Let’s be honest: It’s basically an antique. So it needs to stay locked up where I can keep an eye on it.
I like free speech so much that I’ve decided to keep it.
For the bulk of my working life, I’ve been a very low-level lawyer in Washington, D.C. who managed to scratch my way into a few government contracts with the Department of Justice over the years. This definitely wasn’t my dream (poetry is … sigh), but things worked out this way and mostly it’s been okay.
After using your book (which was great), I was eventually hired full-time by another agency last December, but DOGE killed my position very shortly afterwards before I even finished onboarding, and since then I’ve been scrambling, since the whole legal ecosystem in D.C. is a mess and jobs have vanished.
Recently, a couple positions at DOJ were advertised on a normal, generic online job board. Advertised were Law Clerk I (lower) and Law Clerk II (higher) jobs in a non-evil DOJ division, on a project that was slated to go multiple years. It sounded so promising.
The company advertising the positions put themselves forward as a recruiter, and after a very lengthy back-and-forth (where my correspondent very clearly didn’t understand the norms of the government contracting world) and a call with the prime contractor (a major international consulting company), I was submitted and approved for the higher position. I was then surprised to discover the recruiting company was also the subcontractor and would be my immediate employer.
Well, okay … the prime contractor said they were desperate to hire several dozen attorneys, so maybe they partnered with a new-to-the-field company to get it accomplished on schedule.
After that phone call, the usual background checks and everything were pushed very rapidly. I got seemingly legitimate emails from the prime contractor and also the Department of Defense to fill out the usual security forms; the links in the emails all went to legitimate websites, so I felt fine with continuing.
Then everything came to a crashing halt this morning: the recruiter/subcontractor sent me the official offer letter … but it had the job title of the higher position and the pay rate of the lower position. The pay discrepancy between Clerk I and Clerk II is large — about $72K a year and $93K a year.
It felt like a simple miscommunication, so I replied politely asking for a correction. No, their HR said, that’s the rate. It can’t be negotiated — you already agreed to this.
Well, no, I didn’t. Their HR pointed to an email where I acknowledged the lower rate … as part of a general acknowledgement that there were two positions available. As in, I said, “Yes, I understand there is also a Law Clerk I position that pays X rate per hour.” But then I was submitted for Law Clerk II, and my call with the prime contractor was even titled “Call About Law Clerk II position.”
On top of the rate switch, the medical coverage was abysmal. So I declined to sign the offer letter and asked for an evening to consider my options and think it over.
Well, then I started getting spammed with urgent-sounding texts and calls from employees of all levels at this subcontractor, all asking me to talk this over. Some employees I had never even met or communicated with before!
It began to feel very scammy, and I told them the urgency seemed inappropriate. I talked to friends and family — all while still getting these texts, calls, and emails despite asking for space — and eventually decided I didn’t like the feel of this.
So I emailed the most senior-seeming employee that I was withdrawing from the position. Which was met with a reply, “Can I have a few minutes on the phone to clear this up?”
Everyone I’ve asked says this sounds like one of two different scams. The Long Con would be to hire me and bill me to the prime contractor at the higher rate, but pay me at the lower one and pocket the difference (not unheard of).
Or, scarier, The Truman Show, where the entire job was fabricated and designed to steal as much of my info as possible during the “onboarding” and that even my call with the prime contractor manager was faked. I’m really hoping it wasn’t this one, since it would mean they figured out how to fake government and corporate websites and security forms, which I dutifully filled out.
But underneath these scam theories is a nagging feeling that maybe I’m the one who misread things here?
Do recruiters or subcontracting companies normally invest so heavily in contract workers? I’ve never had multiple employees of a company text, call, and email me so heavily in quick succession to urgently “talk through” what seems like a simple mistake.
I’ve also never had a company insist I had agreed to a lower pay rate and then dig in their heels when I proved I didn’t.
What’s more: in the time it took to write you this email, they sent me an update where now they are happy to pay the higher rate and can “work something out” about the horrible medical coverage.
Am I going crazy, or is something going on here that is less than legitimate?
Something is weird here.
If you got legitimate emails from the government agency, I don’t think it’s a scam … but you should check the real sender of those emails; the “from” field can be spoofed, but the raw source data of the email can’t be, so look at that.
They may indeed be billing for you at a higher rate while paying you the lower one but, as you note, that’s a thing that happens — and it’s not the same thing as an identity theft scam or similar.
And unfortunately, it is sometimes a thing that a company will pull a bait and switch on what job they’re offering — leading you to think you’re interviewing for a higher level position but then offering you a lower-paying one.
But what’s really weird is the extraordinary high-pressure sell to get you to accept the job. Texts and calls from multiple employees there, even people you’d never talked to before? That’s not normal.
It’s possible that you have a hard-to-find skill set that’s crucial to them being able to staff their contract … but if that’s the case, the obvious next move for them would to offer you the higher-paying position, not to have scores of employees blow up your phone.
I don’t know what’s going but it’s odd, for sure.
You might as well talk to the most senior-seeming person who asked to talk about you withdrew and hear them out. Who knows, maybe they’ll say something that changes the way this looks.
But after that, if you’re considering moving forward, make sure you do a lot of research on the subcontracting firm … ideally including talking to the prime contractor again, preferably with you calling them at their publicly listed corporate number so that you’re sure of who you’re talking to. I’d also run the whole thing by anyone you know who’s part of the federal contracting world in D.C. (which is not me) and get their take, as well.
This three-bedroom house was remodeled to look like a giant meatball after the owner mentioned to the host of an HGTV show that he sometimes eats Italian food.
“ABC pulls Jimmy Kimmel off air for Charlie Kirk comments after FCC pressure.” — New York Times
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The FCC has long held that “the public interest is best served by permitting free expression of views.” But given recent events, we recognize there may be some confusion about what is actually allowed. We have added these guidelines for late-night hosts and other members of the traitorous left-wing media.
Please don’t make any jokes that offend or contradict our viewers. By “viewers,” we mean our free-speech-championing president, who many people say deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Late-night jokes shouldn’t be biting, critical, or funny. Jokes should be more like third wives—anodyne, mostly quiet, and on good terms with convicted pedophiles.
As long as you’re rewriting the monologues, please know the president loves a good joke, provided the joke teller fawns over him in the manner of a fatuous and shameless sycophant, and mentions his astonishing 2.8 golf handicap. Also, if you fail to call him a style icon and make any reference at all to his fraud convictions, he will sue you for $15 billion.
Words you are encouraged to use: “woke,” “triggered,” “snowflake,” “vermin,” and “r-word” (also, any other words that begin with one letter and a hyphen).
If you say anything negative about spurious free-speech provocateurs, you will be doxxed, harassed, and fired.
If you publish accurate economic data about the economy, you will be fired.
If you suggest that anyone is using Charlie Kirk’s murder as a pretext to come for critics of the president, we will come for you. We will also delete the word “irony” from the dictionary.
LONDON—Claiming that he recognized the member of the royal family, but his memory was hazy, President Donald Trump has spent his entire trip to the U.K. trying to figure out where he knows Prince Andrew from, sources confirmed Thursday. “Who is that guy? His face seems so familiar,” said Trump, pausing in the middle of shaking hands with various royal dignitaries to get a closer look at the disgraced Duke of York, whose name, as well as the activities they engaged in together, had been eluding him for the past couple days. “Maybe I met him on some boys’ trip? I feel like I’ve seen his penis before. Have we ever gone swimming at the same time? You have a mole right here under your rib cage, right?” At press time, Trump reportedly concluded that the prince, who quickly continued down the halls of Windsor Castle while avoiding all eye contact, must be Stephen Hawking.
JERUSALEM—In response to an independent United Nations inquiry concluding that Israel is committing an ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a defiant statement Thursday in which he criticized the commission’s finding, declaring that “these so-called genocide experts have probably never committed a genocide in their lives.” “Until you’ve killed countless civilians, the word ‘genocide’ shouldn’t even come out of your damn mouth,” said Netanyahu, arguing that the pampered intellectuals at the U.N. were nothing more than a bunch of armchair human rights abusers. “Name one ethnic group you’ve attempted to obliterate. I’ll wait. I mean, have you even bombed a single children’s hospital? Please, you’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. Maybe you read a book about the 1948 Genocide Convention? Well, I’ve read Sports Illustrated, but that doesn’t mean I’m a quarterback. You have no on-the-ground experience mass-murdering civilians like I do, okay?” At press time, the acting U.S. ambassador to the U.N. formally backed Israel’s motion to compel the chair of the Human Rights Council to list three families whose lines he had wiped out if he was such a genocide scholar.
Fox News host Brian Kilmeade apologized for saying that mentally ill homeless people should be subject to “involuntary lethal injections”, a remark he now calls “extremely callous.” What do you think?
“You can’t call for the extermination of anyone these days.”
WASHINGTON—Thanking the government for defending the public from the terrifying screen in their homes, the American people confirmed Thursday that they were grateful to Republicans for protecting them from TV. “Thank God we have the GOP to safeguard us from television and all the frightening people on it,” said Seattle resident Eric Torento, echoing the sentiments of 340 million Americans who commended the Republican Party for its steadfast commitment to shielding them from the terrifying stream of colorful pictures and sounds being continually broadcast into the nation’s homes. “I live in constant fear that I might go outside and walk past a TV screen showing sitcoms, news, or mild topical commentary. If it weren’t for President Trump and other Republicans, who knows what milquetoast jokes we might hear? No longer will we have to worry about the scary box.” At press time, the fearful nation urged the GOP to shelter it from any books, radio, digital media, newspapers, or films.
A Kentucky man was arrested after allegedly killing his partner and leaving behind a to-do list, which included instructions to clean blood, dispose of the body, and hide evidence. What do you think?
“Vision boards are way less incriminating.”
Brandon Brummett, Hedgehog Stylist
“It’s easy to laugh, but to-do lists really can help murderers with ADHD.”
Clark Skirven, Tome Shelver
“This is why I memorize all my crimes with a mnemonic.”
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