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Trump and DOGE Propel V.A. Mental Health System Into Turmoil
A chaotic restructuring order threatens to degrade services for veterans of wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
www.nytimes.com/2025/03/22/us/politics/veterans-affairs-mental-health-doge.html
“I just constantly felt like I am at war,” said Sandra Fenelon, a Navy veteran who had a rocky transition back to civilian life.Credit…Sarah Blesener for The New York Times
By Ellen BarryNicholas Nehamas and Roni Caryn Rabin
March 22, 2025
Updated 2:13 p.m. ET
Late in February, as the Trump administration ramped up its quest to transform the federal government, a psychiatrist who treats veterans was directed to her new workstation — and was incredulous.
She was required, under a new return-to-office policy, to conduct virtual psychotherapy with her patients from one of 13 cubicles in a large open office space, the kind of setup used for call centers. Other staff might overhear the sessions, or appear on the patient’s screen as they passed on their way to the bathroom and break room.
The psychiatrist was stunned. Her patients suffered from disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Treating them from her home office, it had taken many months to earn their trust. This new arrangement, she said, violated a core ethical tenet of mental health care: the guarantee of privacy.
When the doctor asked how she was expected to safeguard patient privacy, a supervisor suggested she purchase privacy screens and a white noise machine. “I’m ready to walk away if it comes to it,” she wrote to her manager, in a text message shared with The New York Times. “I get it,” the manager replied. “Many of us are ready to walk away.”
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Scenes like this have been unfolding in Veterans Affairs facilities across the country in recent weeks, as therapy and other mental health services have been thrown into turmoil amid the dramatic changes ordered by President Trump and pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Among the most consequential orders is the requirement that thousands of mental health providers, including many who were hired for fully remote positions, now work full time from federal office space. This is a jarring policy reversal for the V.A., which pioneered the practice of virtual health care two decades ago as a way to reach isolated veterans, long before the pandemic made telehealth the preferred mode of treatment for many Americans.
As the first wave of providers reports to offices where there is simply not enough room to accommodate them, many found no way to ensure patient privacy, health workers said. Some have filed complaints, warning that the arrangement violates ethics regulations and medical privacy laws. At the same time, layoffs of at least 1,900 probationary employees are thinning out already stressed services that assist veterans who are homeless or suicidal.
ImageA man holding a sign that reads “we want to work” takes part in a demonstration.
A demonstration outside a V.A. medical center in Detroit last month.Credit…Paul Sancya/Associated Press
In more than three dozen interviews, current and recently terminated mental health workers at the V.A. described a period of rapid, chaotic behind-the-scenes change. Many agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because they want to continue to serve veterans, and feared retribution from the Trump administration.
Clinicians warn that the changes will degrade mental health treatment at the V.A., which already has severe staffing shortages. Some expect to see a mass exodus of sought-after specialists, like psychiatrists and psychologists. They expect wait times to increase, and veterans to eventually seek treatment outside the agency.
“Psychotherapy is a very private endeavor,” said Ira Kedson, the president of AFGE local 310 at the Coatesville V.A. Medical Center in Pennsylvania. “It’s supposed to be a safe place, where people can talk about their deepest, darkest fears and issues.” Veterans, he said, trust that what they tell therapists is confidential.
“If they can’t trust us to do that, I think that a sizable number of them will withdraw from treatment,” he said.
A Veterans Affairs spokesman, Peter Kasperowicz, dismissed the contention that a crowded working environment would compromise patient privacy as “nonsensical,” saying that the V.A. “will make accommodations as needed so employees have enough space to work and comply with industry standards for privacy.”
“Veterans are now at the center of everything V.A. does,” Mr. Kasperowicz added. “Under President Trump, V.A. is no longer a place where the status quo for employees is to simply phone it in from home.” Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said the president’s return-to-office order was “ensuring that all Americans benefit from more efficient services, especially our veterans.”
The DOGE cuts have already sparked chaos and confusion within the sprawling agency, which provides care to more than nine million veterans. The Trump administration has said it plans to eliminate 80,000 V.A. jobs, and a first round of terminations has halted some research studies and slashed support staff.
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The exterior of a Veterans Affairs medical center, with a “VA” logo, in Chicago..jpeg
Therapy and other mental health services at Veterans Affairs facilities have been thrown into turmoil amid the dramatic changes ordered by President Trump and pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.Credit…Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
The cuts drive at a sensitive constituency for Mr. Trump, who has campaigned on improving services at the V.A. In Mr. Trump’s first term, the agency expanded remote work as a way to reach veterans who are socially isolated and living in rural areas, who are at an elevated risk for suicide. Now those services are likely to be sharply reduced.
“The end of remote work is essentially the same as cutting mental health services,” said a clinician at a mental health center hub in Kansas, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “These remote docs aren’t moving and they have other options if they are forced to drive to some office however many miles away every day to see their patient virtually from there.”
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Veterans, too, are expressing anxiety. Sandra Fenelon, 33, said she had a rocky transition back to civilian life after leaving the Navy in 2022. “I just constantly felt like I am at war,” said Ms. Fenelon, who lives in New York and is training to become a pharmacist.
It took a year, working with a V.A. psychologist, until she felt safe enough to begin sharing the troubling things she had seen on deployment, things that, she said, “people on the outside would never understand.”
Now, Ms. Fenelon is worried that the tumult at the V.A. will prompt her therapist to leave before she is better. In her session this past week, she burst into tears. “I feel like I’m now forced to be put in a position where I have to start over with someone else,” she said in an interview. “How can I relate to a therapist who never worked with veterans?”
‘You Deserve Better’
For a suicide prevention coordinator in California, mornings start with referrals from a crisis hotline. On a typical day, she said, she is given a list of 10 callers, but sometimes as many as 20 or 30. The work is so intense that, most days, there is no time for a lunch break or bathroom breaks.
“My job is to build rapport, to figure out what I need to do to keep them alive. I let them know: ‘I’m worried about you, I’m going to send someone out to check on you,’” the coordinator said. “I tell them, ‘You served this country. You deserve better.’”
The team, which is responsible for covering some 800,000 veterans, was supposed to get three more social workers, but the new positions were canceled as a result of the administration’s hiring freeze, the coordinator said.
She said the stress around the staff reductions is intense, and fears it will cause her to miss something critical. “I’m so scared I’ll make a mistake,” she said. “I’m not sleeping well, and it’s hard to stay focused.”
Veterans are at sharply higher risk for suicide than the general population; in 2022, the suicide rate was 34.7 per 100,000, compared to 14.2 per 100,000 for the general population. A major factor in this is the availability of firearms, which were used in 73.5 percent of suicide deaths, according to the V.A.
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Bilal Torrens sits on a leather couch surrounded by house plants..jpeg
Bilal Torrens had a job helping homeless veterans settle into life indoors.Credit…Rachel Woolf for The New York Times
In Denver, Bilal Torrens was just finishing a shift when he was notified by email that he was being terminated.
His job, he said, was helping homeless veterans settle into life indoors after years of living on the street. During those early months, Mr. Torrens said, the men are often overwhelmed by the task of collecting benefits, managing medications, even shopping for groceries; he would sit with his clients while they filled out forms and paid bills.
The layoffs reduced the support staff at the homeless service center by a third. The burden will now shift onto social workers, who are already staggering under caseloads of dozens of veterans, he said.
“They’re not going to have enough time to serve any of the veterans properly, the way that they should be served and cared for,” Mr. Torrens said.
Alarms Over Privacy
In Coatesville, Pa., mental health providers have been told they will conduct therapy with veterans from several large office spaces, sitting with their laptops at tables, said Dr. Kedson, who is a psychologist, speaking in his capacity as union president. The spaces are familiar, he said — but they have never before been used for patient care.
“That would sound like you’re seeing them from a call center, because you’d be in a room with a bunch of people who are all talking at the same time,” Dr. Kedson said. “The veterans who are going to be in that position, I suspect they will feel very much like their privacy is being violated.”
So far, only supervisory clinicians have been affected by the return-to-office policy; unionized workers will be expected to report to the office in the coming weeks.
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Rows of small flags lined up along the National Mall in front of the Capitol..webp
A memorial for veterans who died by suicide in Washington.Credit…Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
Dr. Kedson said clinicians have warned that the orders compromise patient privacy, but he has seen little response from the agency’s leadership. “They’re doing it because these are the marching orders coming out of the current administration,” he said. “People are trying to make something that is really untenable work.”
Dr. Lynn F. Bufka, head of practice at the American Psychological Association, said the “longstanding presumed practice for the delivery of psychotherapy” requires a private location, like a room with a door and soundproofing outside the room.
She said HIPAA, the health privacy law, allows for “incidental disclosures” of patient information if they cannot be reasonably prevented — a threshold that she said the V.A. risks not meeting. In this case, she said, the privacy risk could be prevented “by simply not requiring psychologists to return to the office until private spaces are available.”
Several V.A. mental health clinicians told The Times they were interviewing for new jobs or had submitted their resignations. Their departures risk exacerbating already severe staffing shortages at the V.A., outlined in a report last year from its inspector general’s office.
Matthew Hunnicutt wearing a shirt and tie in his home..jpeg
Matthew Hunnicutt, a social worker with nearly 15 years of experience at the V.A., retired last month.Credit…Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
“Everybody is afraid, from the top down,” said Matthew Hunnicutt, 62, a social worker who retired in late February after nearly 15 years, much of it in supervisory positions, at the Jesse Brown V.A. Medical Center in Chicago.
When staff were ordered to shut down diversity initiatives, Mr. Hunnicutt decided to speed up his retirement, feeling that “everything I had done was just wiped away.” He said care at the V.A. had been improved during his time there, with better community outreach, shorter wait times and same-day mental health appointments.
“Just to have it be destroyed like this is extreme,” he said.
Alain Delaquérière and Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
Ellen Barry is a reporter covering mental health for The Times. More about Ellen Barry
Nicholas Nehamas is a Washington correspondent for The Times, focusing on the Trump administration and its efforts to transform the federal government. More about Nicholas Nehamas
Roni Caryn Rabin is a Times health reporter focused on maternal and child health, racial and economic disparities in health care, and the influence of money on medicine. More about Roni Caryn Rabin
Trump and DOGE Propel V.A. Mental Health System Into Turmoil
www.nytimes.com
A chaotic restructuring order threatens to degrade services for veterans of wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Four Megabanks on Wall Street Hold $3.2 Trillion in Uninsured Deposits – Which May Explain Senator Schumer’s Pivot to the GOP to Stop a Government Shutdown
wallstreetonparade.com/2025/03/four-megabanks-on-wall-street-hold-3-2-trillion-in-uninsured-depos…
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 17, 2025 ~
Senator-Chuck-Schumer-Lavishes-Praise-on-Stanley-Fischer-During-Confirmation-Hearing-on-March-13-2014.jpg
Senator Chuck Schumer
During Senator Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) political career, three of his five largest campaign donors have been Wall Street megabanks – Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. His second largest campaign donor over his political career are the partners and employees of Big Law firm Paul Weiss, where his brother, Robert, is actively engaged in Mergers and Acquisitions by major corporations that are publicly traded on Wall Street. Paul Weiss, as a firm, represents some of the largest banks and trading houses on Wall Street.
Last week Schumer, the Minority Leader of the U.S. Senate, did a major pivot between Wednesday and Friday. On Wednesday he vowed that Democrats would stand firm in voting against the Republican version of a Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the federal government open, a spending bill deeply opposed by the majority of Congressional Democrats, who viewed it as a slap in the face to the working class of America. By Friday, Schumer had flipped and voted in favor of the bill – outraging progressives in the party.
Schumer explained his flip-flop as follows on the Senate floor: “As bad as passing the CR is, allowing Donald Trump to take even more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option.”
Shutting down the U.S. government would have had an immediate negative impact on stock prices on Wall Street; the U.S. dollar; potentially the credit rating of U.S. sovereign debt; and it would increase the existing threat of uninsured deposits stampeding out of U.S. banks – raising the threat of another banking crisis potentially worse than the one that occurred in the spring of 2023.
On November 14, 2023, the then Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Martin Gruenberg, testified before the Senate Banking Committee on why his agency had to pay out billions of dollars as a result of the spring bank runs. Gruenberg revealed that the biggest losses to the Deposit Insurance Fund when Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank failed in March, did not come from bad loans or underwater debt instruments but from the FDIC having to make good on the banks’ uninsured deposits that were stampeding out the door. (The FDIC temporarily took the banks into receivership when they failed until they could be sold.) Gruenberg stated:
“As of June 30, 2023, the FDIC estimated the cost for the failures of SVB and Signature Bank to total $18.5 billion. Of that estimated total cost of $18.5 billion, the FDIC estimated that approximately $15.8 billion was attributable to the cost of covering uninsured deposits as a result of the systemic risk determination made on March 12, 2023, following the closures of SVB and Signature Bank.”
The banking crisis of 2023 set off a panic bank run where depositors were withdrawing their uninsured deposits at banks from coast to coast, including from the megabanks. (Federal deposit insurance is capped at $250,000 per depositor per bank.)
What most Americans do not know is that the vast amount of uninsured deposits that are concentrated at just four Wall Street banks could tank the U.S. economy if there was a bank run at these institutions.
According to the Call Reports for the period ending December 31, 2024, uninsured deposits at the domestic branches of the following four megabanks were as follows:
JPMorgan Chase: $1.15 Trillion
Wells Fargo: $652.7 Billion
Citibank, N.A. (part of Citigroup): $594.5 Billion
Bank of America: $821.9 Billion
The above four banks’ domestic uninsured deposits total $3.2 trillion. That’s 202 times the amount of losses on uninsured deposits that the FDIC had to absorb in the 2023 banking crisis.
Stock markets are said to “climb a wall of worry,” which they had been doing for most of January. But markets collapse under a sea of chaos, which has been the operative descriptor of the Trump administration since February.
The other notable news item that may be connected to Schumer’s pivot on the Republican’s spending plan is that the same day (last Friday) that the Senate voted and passed the plan, Donald Trump signed an Executive Order that could potentially cripple the ability of Schumer’s brother’s law firm, Paul Weiss, to stay in business.
The Executive Order stripped the many lawyers holding security clearances at the firm of their security clearance – meaning the firm would have to drop major cases that required their review of classified government documents for their clients, and decline taking new cases involving classified government documents.
The order said the security clearances would be suspended “pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest.”
The Executive Order also cut off Paul Weiss lawyers’ access to government buildings and was silent as to whether that included federal courts. The order also prevented the law firm from getting federal jobs and to receive money from federal contracts.
Every major corporation and Wall Street firm with whom Paul Weiss has done business for 150 years now understands that it has been placed on Donald Trump’s growing list of blacklisted law firms. That is going to have a chilling impact on its ability to attract new business until the case winds its way through the courts.
Paul Weiss has gotten many firms on Wall Street off easy for serious crimes. But that’s not the basis of Trump’s attack on the firm. The Executive Order is all about getting personal revenge for Trump.
Trump specifically cites in the Executive Order the law firm’s representation of the District of Columbia Attorney General against the January 6 attackers, (who were trying to keep Trump in office illegally); and it names a Paul Weiss former law partner, Mark Pomerantz, for joining the Manhattan District Attorney’s office “solely to manufacture a prosecution against me….”
wallstreetonparade.com
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 17, 2025 ~ During Senator Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) political career, three of his five largest campaign donors have
Why Won’t the US’s Largest Labor Federation Talk About a General Strike?
jacobin.com/2020/09/general-strike-afl-cio
BY JEFF SCHUHRKE
The barriers to organizing a general strike in the United States in response to the myriad miseries American workers are facing are massive. But we can’t move toward such a strike without at least putting the possibility on the table and discussing it — something the AFL-CIO has shown no interest in doing.
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AFL-CIO Headquarters, Washington, DC. (Matt Popovich / Flickr)
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Every so often over the past few years, the hashtag #GeneralStrike goes viral, with everyone from obscure Twitter users to celebrities like Cher and Britney Spearscalling for a nationwide work stoppage to demand systemic change. It’s much easier to get a hashtag to take off than to actually pull off a general strike, of course. But since the pandemic began, calls for a general strike have become louder and more frequent, with even the New York Times getting on board.
US union density is at its lowest point in a century, and workers’ power is incredibly low. Still, the number of US workers going on strike is at a thirty-year high. Workers like teachers have pulled off successful work stoppages in the last few years, and the pandemic has shown that strikes or strike threats can be essential tools for defending workers’ health and safety. Such successes have no doubt helped grow the popularity of the idea that the most powerful and effective way workers can fight back against the domination of capital and the willful indifference of neoliberal institutions is by collectively withholding our labor.
It seems like everyone is talking about a general strike these days. Everyone, that is, except the one organization best positioned to not just raise the issue of a general strike, but to go beyond mere talk to actually organize one: the AFL-CIO.
Representing 12.5 million workers from fifty-five affiliated unions linked together not only through the national federation, but also through a robust network of statewide federations and local labor councils all over the country, the AFL-CIO is the single largest workers’ organization in the United States. If any entity has the requisite infrastructure and relationships in place to realize a national, cross-industry strike, it is the AFL-CIO.
While often talked about in the United States as though it were a utopian fantasy, the general strike is a weapon used fairly frequently by workers in other parts of the world. Countries as varied as Brazil, France, South Africa, India, and South Korea, among others, have seen general strikes in recent years, with hundreds of thousands — sometimes millions — of workers walking off the job to protest their respective government’s social and economic policies. These strikes typically last a day or two, but sometimes stretch on for weeks or even months.
Almost always, these enormous, politically inspired, multi-industry work stoppages occur because they are prompted by national unions and labor federations. High-ranking labor officials in many other countries — countries that often differ from one another in terms of laws, politics, and cultures — use the machinery of the organizations they lead to agitate and organize working people into participating in general strikes.
In the United States, despite numerous injustices plaguing the working class, national labor leaders are not at all inclined to use the resources at their disposal to encourage general strikes (with one important exception I’ll get to momentarily). Because of restrictive labor laws, no-strike clauses in union contracts, complex inter-union politics, and a culture that often avoids bold action at all costs, they tend to consider the idea of a general strike to be too risky, too radical, perhaps even ridiculous.
Lacking militant leadership from those who ostensibly speak on behalf of the country’s working class and who are in a position to actually help make a general strike happen, it’s no wonder that it falls to regular folks on social media to sporadically issue the call for a #GeneralStrike.
Whenever these calls crop up, it’s not uncommon to see some labor movement veterans respond with thinly veiled exasperation and condescension. They explain that strikes require actual organizing — not mere hashtags — and how organizing requires time, strategy, and skill. Obviously, they’re absolutely right. Any kind of job action takes organizing, and it’s vital to remind people of the necessity of a long-term commitment to organizing, especially in a society notorious for seeking shortcuts and instant gratification.
But perhaps instead of simply rolling their eyes at the well-meaning people who dare to advocate a general strike without having ever organized, dedicated unionists could make it more of a habit to chide national labor officials who should know all about organizing yet never so much as utter the words “general strike” except when they’re talking about history or foreign unions.
Labor specialists and laypeople alike have become so accustomed to AFL-CIO leaders erring on the side of extreme caution that they often overlook how the federation is uniquely positioned to coordinate a nationwide work stoppage — particularly by using the existing infrastructure and relationships within and between national and local unions, statewide federations, and local labor councils to do the kind of organizing that would be necessary to execute a general strike. As a result, the question of holding high-level labor officials accountable for failing to lead the way rarely comes up in the many lively discussions on how to rejuvenate the labor movement and build working-class power, including discussions on how to organize a general strike. Those with the most influence and power in the labor movement get a pass, while the inability to grow the movement and take militant collective action on a mass scale is attributed either to rank-and-file workers not organizing vigorously and skillfully enough, or the serious structural barriers that worker organizing in the United States faces — something that must be central to any discussion of labor’s predicament, but far from the whole story.
Of course, the notable exception to the lack of interest in general strikes among national labor leaders that I alluded to earlier is Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants and a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council. In early 2019, Nelson famously urged fellow union leaders to begin making preparations for a general strike to put an end to Trump’s devastating federal shutdown. Hours later, the shutdown ended. Not coincidentally, immediately after this episode, Nelson became one of the most popular and well-known labor leaders in the country, as well as a much-rumored contender for the AFL-CIO presidency.
Similar to the Bernie Sanders phenomenon, Nelson’s rise to national prominence demonstrates how at least a significant part of the US working class is clamoring for bold, militant, progressive champions willing to use whatever leverage they have to spur mass collective action to bring about real change. Unlike so many other high-level labor officials who ignore the repeated and justified popular calls for a nationwide work stoppage, she has used her position to uplift and try to realize those calls.
Pulling off a general strike in a traditionally anti-union country like the United States is no easy task, to say the least, but with more labor leaders in the mold of Sara Nelson — particularly at the helm of a national workers’ organization that already has the capacity to organize mass strike action across industries and communities, but lacks the will — it would be more doable.
CONTRIBUTORS
Jeff Schuhrke is a labor historian who teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a member of UIC United Faculty, AFT Local 6456, and a former member of the UIC Graduate Employees Organization, AFT Local 6297.
Why Won’t the US’s Largest Labor Federation Talk About a General Strike?
jacobin.com
The barriers to organizing a general strike in the United States in response to the myriad miseries American workers are facing are massive. But we can’t move toward such a strike without at least p…
Elon Musk, once a tacit backer of DEI, now focuses on anti-White bias
Elon Musk, who was raised during South African apartheid, used to steer clear of debate about race. Now, he frequently advocates for White people.
Nathan Murthy worked as an engineer for Tesla from 2014 until he was fired in 2020 after leading a racial justice protest in the factory. (Christie Hemm Klok/For The Washington Post)
“A lot of us were fed up and let down and felt betrayed by all of our leaders,” Murthy said. He was fired a few days later for “intentionally sabotaging” the assembly line, according to documents Murthy provided to The Post. Tesla did not respond to questions about Murthy’s firing.
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/20/elon-musk-race-dei-doge/
March 20, 2025 at 8:00 a.m. EDTToday at 8:00 a.m. EDT
Elon Musk speaks to reporters in the White House Oval Office in February. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
By Beth Reinhard, Faiz Siddiqui and Clara Ence Morse
In the spring of 2017, two months after a Black employee sued Tesla and alleged that co-workers frequently called him the n-word with impunity, chief executive Elon Musk sent out a companywide email with the subject line “Doing the right thing.”
The note marked one of the first times that the billionaire tech icon, born and raised in privilege during South African apartheid, engaged in a public conversation about race. Avoid making offensive comments, Musk said — but don’t be overly sensitive.
“Part of not being a huge jerk is considering how someone might feel who is part of an historically less represented group,” Musk wrote to thousands of employees, in a message later included in court filings in another lawsuit. But Musk added: “In fairness, if someone is a jerk to you, but sincerely apologizes, it is important to be thick-skinned and accept that apology.”
Over the next eight years, as he became the richest man in the world, Musk shifted from a Democratic-leaning critic of Donald Trump to a Republican-friendly Trump acolyte. He emerged as a hero on the far right who frequently comments on racial issues — and who wields extraordinary power overseeing the president’s cost-cutting operation, known as the U.S. DOGE Service. Musk’s operatives at DOGE — which stands for Department of Government Efficiency, though it is not a Cabinet-level agency — have taken root in offices across the federal bureaucracy, sweeping up reams of potentially sensitive data and demanding drastic cuts to programs and personnel.
An early target was the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion programs at all federal agencies. While opposition to DEI programs has become a mainstream Republican position, Musk has articulated more radical views on race in interviews and posts on X, his social media platform.
He has warned that lower birth rates and immigration are diluting American culture and the cultures of other majority-White and Asian countries. “We should be very cautious about having some sort of global mixing pot,” he said earlier this year. He has called unchecked illegal immigration “civilizational suicide” and “an invasion,” though he himself was working illegally, in violation of his visa, after he deferred his enrollment in a Stanford University graduate program to launch his career in the United States in the 1990s. He also warns that declining birth rates are leading to “population collapse,” and, having fathered over a dozen children, stresses the importance of “smart people” having more kids.
Now, civil rights activists and government watchdogs are concerned that Musk is bringing these views on race and immigration to bear as he and his DOGE staffers scrutinize all corners of the government and execute major public policy changes. Having dispatched with DEI programs, Musk’s team is starting to purge those tasked with protecting employees’ civil rights and investigating discrimination claims.
Earlier this year, Trump seized on Musk’s long-standing claim that DEI efforts have made air travel less safe. He and Musk contended, without evidence, that DEI contributed to the fatal collision in Washington of a U.S. Army helicopter and a passenger plane. “DEI has caused people to DIE,” Musk wrote on X.
“As a spreader of hate and disinformation on his own platform, what pops into Mr. Musk’s head at 3 in the morning can be seen by millions of people,” said Imran Ahmed, founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks extremism and that X has unsuccessfully sued. “He is in a position of considerable political power, with the ability to withhold or increase government funding based on his whims.”
Musk’s comments circulate through a public address system unmatched in modern politics. With roughly 220 million followers, his X account is the platform’s most popular — with a reach that exceeds Trump’s — and it reflects a preoccupation with race, immigration and diversity. He posted about these topics an average of roughly four times a day in the four months leading up to Trump’s inauguration; about 10 percent of his posts were about those topics from the beginning of 2024 through the middle of this month, a sevenfold increase over 2021, according to a Washington Post review that used keywords to categorize them.
Musk frequently interacts with accounts that comment on racial issues and draw attention to crimes committed by Black people or immigrants. For example, Musk has interacted more than 60 times in the past year with an account named @iamyesyouareno that has about 471,000 followers. In response to a post that said, “White people aren’t allowed to have their own homelands,” Musk wrote, “I think it’s great that America is so diverse but this does seem asymmetric.” Musk also highlighted several posts that suggested non-White people “hate” White people by responding with exclamation marks or comments like “True.”
That’s a typical Musk tactic: amplifying a controversial opinion on a racially sensitive topic in a way certain to raise hackles on the left. “Something to think about,” Musk wrote recently in response to podcaster Ben Shapiro calling for Trump to pardon Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd.
Musk did not respond to The Post’s request for an interview. He also did not respond to questions about the 2017 email to Tesla employees, nor did he address whether his views about race have changed. Tesla and X also did not respond to requests for comment.
In response to detailed questions about Musk, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt attacked The Post and said: “This story is literally just combing together random things from the internet to paint Elon Musk as a racist. Get a life.”
Musk, 53, has argued it is White people who are frequently the victims of discrimination because of what he views as left-wing overreach to correct perceived racial inequities and to silence right-wing commentary. “We need to be very cautious about anything that is anti-meritocratic, and anything that results in the suppression of free speech,” Musk said in a 2023 interview.
Musk frequently uses X to call attention to what he sees as anti-White racism. A Tucker Carlson podcast last year was billed on X with this takeaway: “There is systemic racism in the United States, against whites. Everyone knows it. Nobody says it. How come?” Musk reposted it, adding, “Concerning.”
Allies say Musk is simply embracing an open exchange of ideas in a way that liberals reject. Tech investor Bill Lee once observed on social media that “only a handful of [people] truly know him but so so so many haters.”
“This is a debate about speech the left doesn’t like, and speech they don’t like they deem racist,” said Tom Fitton, who leads the conservative group Judicial Watch. “Musk is helping increase the free speech rights of millions of citizens.”
But Musk’s views have increasingly attracted public scrutiny, including after he made a gesture during Trump’s inaugural festivities that critics said resembled a Nazi salute. Musk denounced that claim, then posted a message on X using Third Reich leaders’ names as puns. “Bet you did nazi that coming,” Musk wrote, leading Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt — who had previously defended the salute as “an awkward gesture” — to admonish: “The Holocaust is not a joke.”
The electric car company Musk leads faces several ongoing lawsuits alleging racial discrimination. Some complaints have been moved to private arbitration as part of the company’s efforts to keep disputes out of open court, including the case that was followed by his 2017 companywide email; that plaintiff lost. In one racial discrimination case against Tesla that went to trial, a jury awarded $3.2 million in 2023 to a Black elevator operator. In all of the cases, Tesla staunchly denies that Black employees were mistreated or retaliated against for reporting racist conduct.
Musk is not a defendant in these suits. But some former employees and their lawyers say his comments about racial sensitivities set a tone of intolerance. Nathan Murthy, a Black and Filipino former Tesla engineer fired in 2020 after leading a racial justice protest in a factory, recalled reading Musk’s “thick-skinned” email over and over again.
“It felt really dismissive when there was very obvious racial tension,” Murthy said. “Musk was essentially saying, ‘Shut up and go back to work.’”
Murthy added: “I’ve been trying to raise the alarm on Elon for years.”
‘I had a tough childhood’
Musk was raised in South Africa during the last chapters of apartheid in the 1970s and 1980s, a period he rarely discusses publicly. “I had a tough childhood,” he has said in multiple interviews. His parents divorced when he was 8, and he was bullied by classmates and verbally abused by his father, according to Musk biographies.
Still, Musk enjoyed the privileges that came with being White in Pretoria at a time when segregation was violently enforced on the impoverished Black majority.
“We grew up in a bubble of entitlement,” said Rudolph Pienaar, who graduated with Musk from Pretoria Boys High School in 1988 and now works in the U.S. as a biomedical scientist. “I am not sure if Elon can conceive of systematic discrimination and struggle because that’s not his experience. His life now in some ways is how it was under apartheid — rich and entitled with the entire society built to sustain him and his ilk.”
Pretoria Boys High was a socially progressive school that admitted a handful of Black students, but Pienaar and two other former classmates who said they were friendly with Musk said they could not recall him ever talking about politics.
In an email to The Post, his father, Errol, said Musk and his younger brother were “interested in motorbikes, computers, basketball and a little about girls. They were not into political nonsense, and we lived in a very well-run, law-abiding country with virtually no crime at all. Actually no crime. We had several black servants who were their friends.”
Errol added that Musk and his brother also had several Black friends.
Errol Musk, the father of Elon Musk, at his house in Langebaan, South Africa, in 2022. (Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/Getty Images)
In a sign that the family disapproved of racial segregation, Musk and his brother attended an anti-apartheid concert, according to a biography by Walter Isaacson. Terence Beney, who knew Musk at Pretoria Boys High, remembered him attending a funeral for a Black friend who was killed in a car crash in 1987. Beney said that growing up in a country in which official censors would use nails to scratch banned records at radio stations helps explain why Musk cast himself as a “free speech absolutist” when he bought Twitter and reinstated social media accounts previously suspended for hate speech.
Musk’s father worked as an engineer and imported emeralds from an unregistered mine in Zambia, which “helped me and my two boys sustain ourselves during the collapse of Apartheid in SA,” he said in the email to The Post. Musk noted his father’s share in an emerald mine in a 2014 interview but wrote years later about “the fake emerald mine thing.” Errol told Isaacson about the mine: “If you registered it, you would wind up with nothing, because the Blacks would take everything from you.”
Errol also served on the Pretoria City Council after defeating an Afrikaner member of the pro-apartheid National Party in 1972. Musk’s mother, Maye, is a Canadian-born model. Her father, Joshua Haldeman, moved the family from Canada to South Africa during apartheid and embraced racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories, according to reporting by the Atlantic. He died when Musk was 2.
Musk, who left South Africa when he was 17, frequently says that slavery has been practiced all over the world for centuries by people of all races. “We are all descended from slaves,” he said in a podcast interview last year.
“Elon hasn’t been back much,” said Beney, who still lives in Pretoria. “I don’t think he considers himself South African at all. … The U.S. is home.”
Musk introduces the Tesla Model S in Hawthorne, California, in 2009. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)
‘Phony social justice warriors’
By 2017, Musk was a monster Silicon Valley success story, worth an estimated $15 billion. He had led Tesla for nearly a decade and was hailed as an environmentally conscious innovator. Early in Trump’s first term, Musk criticized the president’s executive order banning travel from several majority-Muslim countries. He later resigned from an advisory board when Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement.
After the racial discrimination lawsuit was filed against Tesla that March, Musk sent the companywide email saying that on one hand, minorities “have endured difficulties that someone born or raised in a more privileged situation did not.” He added, “Don’t ever intentionally allow someone to feel excluded, uncomfortable or unfairly treated.”
On the other hand, Musk wrote, “Sometimes these things happen unintentionally, in which case you should apologize.” Lawsuits from people from underrepresented groups who claim they have not been promoted enough, he said, are “obviously not cool.”
But Tesla soon faced several other racial discrimination lawsuits from individuals as well as California and federal regulators, who alleged that in multiple instances, the n-word was used and swastikas and racial slurs were scrawled on bathroom walls and lunch tables. One ongoing suit — certified by a state judge as a class action representing thousands of Tesla employees — claimed, “In light of CEO Musk’s message to employees that racist epithets can be directed ‘unintentionally’ and that it is ‘important to be thick-skinned,’ it is not surprising that the Tesla Factory has become a hotbed for racist behavior.”
Tesla pushed back. A response titled “Hotbed of Misinformation” said Tesla investigates all complaints of discrimination or harassment and if they are proved to be true, the company takes immediate action. The company also said that Musk’s email was meant to ensure a collegial workplace and noted that in a company of 33,000 employees, “it is not humanly possible to stop all bad conduct, but we will do our best to make it is as close to zero as possible.” Later, in an interview, Musk personally vouched for the climate at Tesla’s factory in California, calling it “a very good atmosphere.”
In 2020, the violent deaths of Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement. Musk briefly commiserated, writing “#JusticeForGeorge” on social media and demanding criminal charges against Chauvin’s colleagues present during Floyd’s arrest. A top Black Tesla executive wrote about her sorrow and fear after Floyd’s death, later adding that Musk “told me that I had his full support.”
At the time, Tesla was publishing DEI reports that highlighted “unconscious bias trainings” and recruitment on historically Black college campuses. But Murthy, who had started working as a Tesla engineer a few years earlier, said he routinely heard about and experienced racially insensitive remarks, echoing a claim made in the racial discrimination lawsuits against the company. He helped organize a protest in September 2020 in which he said five employees on the assembly line stopped working and sat mostly in silence for about three hours to honor Taylor.
Nathan Murthy worked as an engineer for Tesla from 2014 until he was fired in 2020 after leading a racial justice protest in the factory. (Christie Hemm Klok/For The Washington Post)
“A lot of us were fed up and let down and felt betrayed by all of our leaders,” Murthy said. He was fired a few days later for “intentionally sabotaging” the assembly line, according to documents Murthy provided to The Post. Tesla did not respond to questions about Murthy’s firing.
By the time the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sued Tesla in 2023, a prominent index of sustainability-focused public companies had ousted the company, citing, in part, the racial discrimination claims. Musk called the index a “scam” and questioned how ExxonMobil could get a higher rating than Tesla. The index, he said, “has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.”
By the following year, Tesla had removed all DEI references from documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “DEI is just another word for racism,” Musk said on X. “Shame on anyone who uses it.” Musk endorsed Trump later in 2024, and his shift from tacit supporter of DEI to outspoken opponent was complete.
Musk made extensive public remarks on race in an hour-long interview last year with former CNN host Don Lemon. He denied accusations that he buys into the “great replacement theory,” a far-right trope that there is a deliberate effort to “replace” White people in Western societies with racial and ethnic minorities. “I’m simply saying there appears to be a very clear incentive for Democrats to have to maximize the number of illegals because it helps them win elections,” he said.
People should be rewarded for their talent and skills, Musk said, not their skin color. “I think being aware of inequities in society is fine, of course, but trying to make everything a race issue is, I think, divisive and corrosive to society,” he said.
Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, who defended Trump during his first impeachment trial and has discussed free speech issues with Musk, said he has become someone “worth listening to” by people across the political spectrum.
“He shoots from the hip sometimes, but I think he’s right about DEI,” Dershowitz said. “The left doesn’t really want diverse ideas, just diverse skin colors in the room.”
Musk walks out to speak before Donald Trump at a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden in New York on Oct. 27. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
A right-wing firebrand
Musk’s purchase of Twitter in 2022 marked a turning point in the evolution of his public persona from business-minded tech prodigy to pro-Trump champion of MAGA ideas.
He restored accounts suspended for hate speech and misinformation — including Trump’s — and later rebranded the platform as X. Advertisers fled. But Musk dug in. X sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate after it reported that the social media site was profiting by restoring accounts of “neo-Nazis, white supremacists, misogynists and spreaders of dangerous conspiracy theories.” A federal judge dismissed the case, calling it a blatant attempt to punish X’s critics.
On the right, Musk’s takeover of Twitter made him a hero. Fitton and other prominent conservatives view Musk’s running commentary about race relations as a crucial counterpoint to liberal rhetoric. “Maybe him pushing back is not what’s unusual — it’s the racial obsessions of the left that are the problem,” Fitton said.
Meanwhile, an outspoken minority of Tesla shareholders who manage sustainability-minded investments began pressing Musk to focus more on electric cars and less on divisive politics. His constant trolling of liberals on X has driven away potential customers and created a divisive work environment — since before the current backlash over his DOGE role, said Kristin Hull, founder of the Nia Impact Capital asset management firm. “He is always insulting somebody,” Hull said, “and that’s very problematic for investors and for the brand.”
In 2023, Musk fended off accusations of antisemitism following his attacks on the Jewish billionaire George Soros and the Anti-Defamation League and, most notably, after he promoted an X post accusing Jewish people of a “dialectical hatred against whites.” Musk wrote, “You have said the actual truth.”
Behind the scenes, several of Musk’s Jewish friends chided him and tried to act as brokers between him and the ADL, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. He later apologized for his social media post and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to Israel in late 2023.
Musk also visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in early 2024. The European Jewish Association invited Gidon Lev, a Holocaust survivor who was eager to share his personal experiences with Musk.
Musk, however, was surrounded by an entourage of photographers and Shapiro, the Jewish right-wing podcaster, Lev said. Musk greeted him kindly but never engaged him in conversation, according to Lev. “There was no attempt by his part to make any human connection to me,” he said.
In an interview with Shapiro after the tour, Musk said, “It was incredibly moving and deeply sad and tragic that humans could do this to other humans.” The billionaire also reflected on his insular lifestyle: “I must admit to being somewhat, frankly, naive about this. In the circles that I move, I see almost no antisemitism. … I never hear it in dinner conversations.”
Musk, with his son, walks through the U.S. Capitol on Dec. 5. (Maansi Srivastava/For The Washington Post)
The keys to the government
When Trump returned to the White House, he gave Musk the keys to powerful government agencies while shielding him from some of the public disclosure requirements that bind other officials who command his level of influence.
Musk, who has a net worth of more than $320 billion, is leading the charge to eviscerate the U.S. Agency for International Development, which administers humanitarian assistance abroad. “USAID is a ball of worms,” Musk said. “There is no apple.” Last month, when the president halted all U.S. aid to South Africa and called for resettling White Afrikaners as refugees, both he and Musk made the baseless assertion that the government there is confiscating land from White people.
Musk has cheered Trump’s orders wiping out DEI programs and his decision to rescind a 1965 executive order requiring federal contractors to take “affirmative action” to root out discrimination. Proponents of DEI programs say they are designed to correct historical injustices and level the playing field for underrepresented groups. Musk and other Trump allies argue that such efforts are no longer needed and even a form of racism against White people. “One of the major reasons why I left the Democratic party,” Musk wrote on X a few months ago.
In late January, breaking with decades of precedent, Trump firedCharlotte Burrows, a Democratic commissioner on the EEOC who had initiated the investigation into Tesla. It was the only lawsuit filed by the EEOC in fiscal year 2023 that stemmed from an investigation recommended by an individual commissioner. Trump also replaced the agency’s general counsel, raising questions about whether the EEOC will continue to pursue the lawsuit. An EEOC spokeswoman said the commission does not comment on litigation. Burrows told The Post it would “betray the agency’s core mission” if the EEOC dropped the civil rights case. The racial discrimination case against Tesla brought by California’s civil rights agency is scheduled for a jury trial in September, according to court documents.
Amid Musk’s aggressive moves into government agencies, he also has faced questions about his gesture at Trump’s inaugural rally. In a recent podcast, Shapiro said it was clearly just a show of enthusiasm. “You know why my Nazi radar doesn’t go off around Musk? Because he’s not a damned Nazi,” Shapiro said, mocking the left for casting opponents as “not just wrong … evil.”
Musk also drew criticism in January for addressing a rally for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Germany’s domestic intelligence service considers the AfD a “suspected extremist case,” a designation affirmed by a court last year. There is “too much of a focus on past guilt,” Musk told the crowd, in what critics viewed as a rebuke of the Jewish community’s long-standing vow to never forget the Holocaust.
Gideon Fourie, who attended high school with Musk in South Africa and now lives in Germany, said he was shocked by Musk’s support for a party that is under investigation by national authorities for Islamophobia and radical anti-migrant stances.
“I am incredibly sensitive to racism because of where I came from, and for him to support this far-right party really blows my mind,” Fourie said. “Everything that has happened in the last few years was very contrary to the trajectory I thought he was on.”
Last month, Musk announced that he would rehire a DOGE staffer who resigned after the Wall Street Journal linked him to a social media account that advocated racism and eugenics. “To err is human,” Musk wrote, “to forgive divine.”
Pranshu Verma, Jeremy B. Merrill and Elizabeth Dwoskin contributed to this report.
Elon Musk, once a tacit backer of DEI, now focuses on anti-White bias
www.washingtonpost.com
Elon Musk, who was raised during South African apartheid, used to steer clear of debate about race. Now, he frequently advocates for White people.
Violence and neglect plague a Bay Area psychiatric hospital. California has left its patients in danger
www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2025/california-psychiatric-hospitals-patients/
BY JOAQUIN PALOMINO AND CYNTHIA DIZIKES
UPDATED MARCH 19, 2025 9:34 A.M.
“If the state isn’t looking out for these patients, who is?”
Five police officers barged into Santa Rosa Behavioral Healthcare Hospital with their guns at the ready.
Inside the psychiatric hospital’s adolescent unit on that Wednesday night in May 2023, patients were kicking, scratching and spitting on employees as staff members struggled to pin them down and quell the riot. A girl ripped a block of Sheetrock from the wall and hurled it at workers.
The on-call hospital administrator was nowhere to be found. There were too few employees to keep watch, let alone care for the 18 children suffering from depression, addiction and suicidal urges who were supposed to be receiving therapy and mental health treatment.
“It was very chaotic and there appeared to be no one in charge,” one of the Santa Rosa police officers, who responded to the hospital’s 911 call that night, recounted to health regulators. “The staff was not prepared for this kind of situation.”
FAILED TO DEATH: A CHRONICLE INVESTIGATION
California is committing more and more people to psychiatric hospitals run by for-profit companies. The results are devastating. This is the third part of an investigative series.
Note: This story contains descriptions of sexual assault, suicide, self-harm and mental illness that may be upsetting to readers and survivors.
Márta grieves during Jázmin’s service at a funeral home in Concord on May 18, 2024..jpeg
The mystery shocked San Francisco. This is the story of the 15-year-old girl found dead in a driveway (1/3)
An illustration of a patient at a psychiatric hospital hovering over their bed, uncared for
With bare-bones staffing and little treatment, California’s profit-driven psychiatric hospitals are destroying lives (2/3)
An illustration depicts a person with a flashlight, searching through a maze of pills and coins.
The Chronicle is investigating California’s for-profit psychiatric hospitals. Here are our key takeaways so far (3/3)
RESOURCES AND SUPPORT
GOT A TIP ABOUT FOR-PROFIT PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITALS?
The riot was not the first time — nor would it be the last — that the for-profit facility run by Signature Healthcare Services was overrun by dysfunction due to neglect by both its operator and the state agency overseeing psychiatric hospitals.
For nearly a decade, Santa Rosa Behavioral employees and patients have pleaded for the California Department of Public Health to better protect the thousands of people treated inside the facility each year.
The agency, which licenses hospitals and responds to patient and worker complaints, has documented dozens of violations at Santa Rosa Behavioral since it opened, many of them tied to understaffing. The failures have contributed to a litany of assaults, sexual abuses and potentially preventable deaths.
A view of the Santa Rosa Behavioral Healthcare Hospital from overhead..jpeg
Santa Rosa Behavioral Healthcare Hospital off Fulton Road in Santa Rosa. Brontë Wittpenn/The Chronicle
But a Chronicle investigation found that CDPH has chosen not to meaningfully intervene, even as Santa Rosa Behavioral has again and again broken promises to reform itself — a pattern emblematic of the agency’s hands-off approach to regulating for-profit psychiatric hospitals across the state.
The health department answers to the governor, but otherwise has broad discretion to determine how — or if — it will hold dangerous facilities accountable. The agency can issue fines up to $125,000 for violations of state or federal regulations, and it can stop hospitals from accepting patients until serious safety concerns are addressed. These penalties, though, are not mandatory.
As a result, even as CDPH has cited California’s 21 for-profit psychiatric hospitals for hundreds of safety lapses since 2019, it has chosen to collect only $94,200 from three facilities — none of which were Santa Rosa Behavioral. Not once during this period has the agency halted admissions anywhere in the state.
Instead, the Chronicle found, CDPH requires hospital administrators to submit “plans of correction” that outline how they will address deficiencies and prevent future violations. The department approves the plans, but the reforms are often short-lived — or never fully realized, state records show — allowing problems to fester.
Here’s how one plan of correction played out at Santa Rosa Behavioral Healthcare Hospital.
1INCITING INCIDENT
05.06.23
A document tear from a CDPH incident report.jpeg
A patient attempted suicide for the fourth time in an understaffed unit of the hospital after an employee who had been assigned too many patients to watch at once could not properly monitor him.
2PLAN OF CORRECTION
01.12.24
A document tear from a CDPH incident report plan of correction.jpeg
Santa Rosa Behavioral Healthcare Hospital vowed to increase staffing and improve safety in the facility.
3PROBLEMS REPEAT
03.25.24
A document tear from a later CDPH incident report.jpeg
Two months later, inspectors found that understaffing had contributed to widespread assaults. CDPH asked for another plan of correction.
“The system is broken,” said Charlene Harrington, a former top regulator at CDPH and professor emeritus of social behavioral sciences at UCSF, who reviewed the Chronicle’s findings. “If they are not giving fines and penalties or placing holds on admissions, they aren't going to be successful because there are no teeth. It’s just a game.”
The health department did not respond to specific questions about why the agency hasn’t taken stronger actions against for-profit psychiatric hospitals, including Santa Rosa Behavioral. In a statement, spokesperson Mark Smith said the department regularly investigates psychiatric hospitals to ensure they are providing safe care. If violations are discovered, officials review them on a “case-by-case basis” to determine whether to issue fines or revoke a hospital’s license.
“Ensuring hospitals at all levels are adequately staffed, and that proper care is provided to patients, is a crucial part of our mission to protect the quality and safety of health care for all Californians,” Smith said.
Signature also did not respond to specific questions about Santa Rosa Behavioral. A spokesperson said the company’s psychiatric hospitals are staffed based on “the specialized needs” of patients by employing nurses, mental health technicians, therapists and psychiatrists.
“Each hospital takes all incidents and negative outcomes seriously, investigating and adjusting protocols or retraining staff to prevent recurrence,” the spokesperson said.
The Chronicle examined CDPH’s oversight of for-profit psychiatric hospitals through the history of Santa Rosa Behavioral, as Gov. Gavin Newsom embarks on foundational changes to the state’s behavioral health care system that are poised to push more people into these locked facilities.
In an earlier part of this series, reporters detailed how for-profit psychiatric hospital operators have taken advantage of lax state staffing regulations to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in earnings. Although California law requires CDPH to set minimum nurse-to-patient ratios in psychiatric hospitals, the agency has failed to do so, contributing to understaffing, violence and deadly neglect.
For this investigation, reporters reviewed nearly 10 years of deficiency reports, corrective action plans and litigation records to assess the effectiveness of the department’s near-exclusive reliance on plans of correction to police for-profit psychiatric hospitals. They also interviewed dozens of current and former employees, local and state regulators, and other health care experts.
Psychiatric hospitals serve a critical role in the community, offering short-term treatment to people placed on involuntary “5150” holds — a reference to the state law that allows authorities to detain people who are a danger to themselves or others, or are unable to take care of their basic needs due to mental illness.
But the Chronicle found that CDPH’s weak oversight has enabled some for-profit psychiatric facilities to repeatedly harm patients as they violate the same rules with near impunity. Santa Rosa Behavioral, in particular, shows the cost of this failure.
In plans of correction since 2016, administrators at the Sonoma County hospital have pledged to create systems to promptly inform health officials, child protective services or law enforcement about instances of abuse at least five times. But as recently as last year, the facility was still not doing that.
Hospital leaders have promised to better staff units or monitor vulnerable patients at least eight times, only to have health inspectors return to the facility to cite them for not meeting those bare minimum standards.
And violence and abuse recently exploded inside the hospital, despite numerous reforms specifically intended to prevent it. Employees told CDPH last March that there were so few staff members that assaults had become a daily occurrence and patients received no treatment while being warehoused in their rooms like “caged animals.”
“There is so much pressure to get more patients, ‘heads in beds,’” the hospital’s director of nursing told state health inspectors last spring, adding that patients were admitted “without considering if we had enough staff to safely care for them.”
The nursing director resigned after speaking to inspectors.
After years of alerting the state to dire safety violations, former Santa Rosa Behavioral employees told the Chronicle it was hard to believe conditions had become even worse.
“I am surprised that their doors are still open,” said Lily Akers, a former Santa Rosa Behavioral nurse. “If the state isn’t looking out for these patients, who is?”
An illustration from a document reading ‘didn’t have staff for patient supervision’.jpeg
Alex Tatusian/The Chronicle
“We’re really delighted. Having it here means that our clients will be recovering in the community.”
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Officials in the North Bay celebrated when Santa Rosa Behavioral opened in 2013 in a residential corner of the city, where suburban homes give way to vineyards.
Financial pressures had pushed a pair of psychiatric units in Sonoma County to shutter, forcing residents in crisis to travel far from home. Signature, a fast-growing, privately held company based in Southern California, purchased one of the defunct hospitals and rebranded it.
The revived facility would treat patients seeking voluntary care, as well as those placed on involuntary holds lasting 72 hours or longer. This kindled hope that top-notch mental health care would be available locally.
“We’re really delighted,” the county’s then-director of health services said at the time. “Having it here means that our clients will be recovering in the community.”
But those expectations were short-lived.
In October 2016, Santa Rosa Behavioral’s chief nursing officer alerted CDPH to a series of problems. Hospital staff were badly overstretched, she told state health inspectors, and administrators kept bringing in more patients. Caregivers couldn’t keep up with the demand, nor maintain full control of the facility, causing “negative patient events” and employee injuries.
In this environment, state health records show, a teenage girl said she was sexually abused by another patient. The facility did not promptly investigate the allegation or report it to police, child protective services and CDPH, as required by regulations. Instead, staff members kept the two children in the same unit for another four days and provided the victim no additional protections.
Shortly afterwards, CDPH uncovered a slew of additional violations so severe that inspectors concluded they were likely to cause “serious injury, harm, impairment or death.”
“We used to have security in the building, but they got injured when responding to Code Green calls so a lot of them quit.”“We used to have security in the building, but they got injured when responding to Code Green calls so a lot of them quit.”“We used to have security in the building, but they got injured when responding to Code Green calls so a lot of them quit.”
“The facility did away with hall monitors a while ago, we do not have any.”“The facility did away with hall monitors a while ago, we do not have any.”“The facility did away with hall monitors a while ago, we do not have any.”
The patients started “bumping into each other” when the beds filled up and became highly agitated.The patients started “bumping into each other” when the beds filled up and became highly agitated.The patients started “bumping into each other” when the beds filled up and became highly agitated.
There was not time to adequately assess the new patients when they came “back-to-back-to-back.”There was not time to adequately assess the new patients when they came “back-to-back-to-back.”There was not time to adequately assess the new patients when they came “back-to-back-to-back.”
“There is immense pressure from the Chief Executive Officer to get more patients to increase the census.”“There is immense pressure from the Chief Executive Officer to get more patients to increase the census.”
“In December it started to get really unsafe in the facility. We worked out of ratio consistently on the weekends and nights.”“In December it started to get really unsafe in the facility. We worked out of ratio consistently on the weekends and nights.”“In December it started to get really unsafe in the facility. We worked out of ratio consistently on the weekends and nights.”
“If they had more staff they could monitor him closely, develop a better relationship and perhaps allow for some cooperation, but staffing doesn't allow that.”“If they had more staff they could monitor him closely, develop a better relationship and perhaps allow for some cooperation, but staffing doesn't allow that.”“If they had more staff they could monitor him closely, develop a better relationship and perhaps allow for some cooperation, but staffing doesn't allow that.”
The lack of staffing contributed to the assaults because there were not enough staff to assess and monitor all the patients and respond to an escalation of behaviors.The lack of staffing contributed to the assaults because there were not enough staff to assess and monitor all the patients and respond to an escalation of behaviors.The lack of staffing contributed to the assaults because there were not enough staff to assess and monitor all the patients and respond to an escalation of behaviors.
“The problem was we do not have the appropriate staff with the appropriate training.”“The problem was we do not have the appropriate staff with the appropriate training.”“The problem was we do not have the appropriate staff with the appropriate training.”
“The facility’s priority of admitting patients without considering if we had enough staff to safely care for them has contributed to an unsafe environment for patients and staff.”“The facility’s priority of admitting patients without considering if we had enough staff to safely care for them has contributed to an unsafe environment for patients and staff.”“The facility’s priority of admitting patients without considering if we had enough staff to safely care for them has contributed to an unsafe environment for patients and staff.”
An employee said the hospital was “just warehousing patients” by failing to provide activities and therapy.An employee said the hospital was “just warehousing patients” by failing to provide activities and therapy.An employee said the hospital was “just warehousing patients” by failing to provide activities and therapy.
There were never activities, “ever” on the weekend. There were never activities, “ever” on the weekend.
“Not one patient had consistently participated in or been offered four Social Services activities a day.”“Not one patient had consistently participated in or been offered four Social Services activities a day.”“Not one patient had consistently participated in or been offered four Social Services activities a day.”
Staffing was a constant struggle, resulting in nurse-to-patient ratios of 1:24. “There is nothing other than a medication pass happening when the ratio is that low.”Staffing was a constant struggle, resulting in nurse-to-patient ratios of 1:24. “There is nothing other than a medication pass happening when the ratio is that low.”Staffing was a constant struggle, resulting in nurse-to-patient ratios of 1:24. “There is nothing other than a medication pass happening when the ratio is that low.”
“I could not find documentation of an abuse prevention program. It was mostly done by word of mouth.”“I could not find documentation of an abuse prevention program. It was mostly done by word of mouth.”“I could not find documentation of an abuse prevention program. It was mostly done by word of mouth.”
For years, workers at Santa Rosa Behavioral have alerted CDPH to serious staffing problems that put employees and patients in danger.
Children said they “didn’t feel safe” due to violence inside the hospital. Staff members left patients who were experiencing suicidal urges and needed constant supervision unmonitored for long stretches. And management assigned a file clerk from the business office to watch patients, even though the employee had no training for that role.
The results were as troubling as they were predictable. The day before the chief nursing officer filed her complaint, an adolescent patient wrapped a pillowcase and sheet around their neck before staff members noticed.
Afterward, a doctor ordered an employee to be within arm’s reach of the patient at all times, but due to understaffing, that didn’t happen. The patient who attempted suicide was then sexually assaulted by a peer who was also not being properly monitored. Health inspectors found that workers had fabricated their observation logs by documenting that they were watching the patients when they weren’t.
Santa Rosa Behavioral “had no formal system for preventing, identifying and investigating suspected abuse,” CDPH concluded. On top of that, the chief nursing officer said the facility simply “did not have enough staff” to keep some of its most vulnerable patients safe.
“When you are lacking staff, what that really comes down to is people are not getting their needs met, and that is when bad things happen,” said Jessica Thomas-Langdon, a nurse who used to work at the Santa Rosa hospital and is now part of a class-action employment lawsuit against the facility. Signature has denied violating labor laws.
“If I am in the back charting, and trying to shove a sandwich down my throat, I am not watching my kids,” Thomas-Langdon said.
Some former employees told the Chronicle that even with full staffing, serious incidents can still occur given a challenging and at times unpredictable patient population. In general, Signature said “no health care provider achieves 100% positive patient outcomes” and to suggest otherwise “misleads the public and sews further barriers for those suffering mental illness from seeking help.”
CDPH, however, recognized the severity of Santa Rosa Behavioral’s staffing problems at the time, and its impacts on patient safety. But, the agency still chose not to issue any fines, state data shows, and instead asked only for two plans of correction.
The hospital pledged to prevent future assaults and to ensure that all serious incidents would be reported to state officials. Additional employees were hired, including hallway monitors in the adolescent units, to better keep track of patients.
An illustration from a document about Santa Rosa’s staffing neglect.jpeg
Alex Tatusian/The Chronicle
“Both staff and patients deserve better — better treatment, better communication, better safety.”
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Lily Akers stands with her hands folded at the base of a stairway..jpeg
Lily Akers worked at Santa Rosa Behavioral before leaving the hospital amid concerns about understaffing.Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle
Lily Akers had just graduated from nursing school and was preparing to take her licensing exams in 2019 when Santa Rosa Behavioral hired her as an unlicensed mental health worker, an entry-level position that provides much of the direct care to patients in psychiatric hospitals.
Although she had been excited to start her career, Akers told the Chronicle that she was almost immediately confronted with staffing shortages that placed workers in danger, particularly at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. She and her colleagues raised concerns with supervisors and hospital leaders, Akers said, but they did nothing about it.
So in April 2020, she put in her resignation notice, then called CDPH to report the hospital’s unsafe conditions. “Both staff and patients deserved better — better treatment, better communication, better safety,” Akers said. “It would have been a disservice to the patients and the people who worked there to not speak up.”
Her complaint was one of several made to CDPH about Santa Rosa Behavioral that year, sparking another round of investigations and citations.
The public health department had already issued a deficiency report in February 2020 after inspectors found that the hospital had again failed to protect adolescent patients, resulting in separate instances of sexual abuse.
In the first case, a preteen boy was allegedly able to have oral sex with his roommate when the facility did not put him in his own room, despite the boy being considered at high risk of “sexually acting out.” An employee said “a push to fill empty beds” had kept the hospital from properly screening patients at admission, leading to such mistakes.
In the second case, a teenage girl said that she was pressured into sex acts by her roommate, and that staff members said it was her fault.
Around the same time, a 12-year-old girl reported that a male nurse had placed her hand on his genitals. Staff members did not properly investigate the incident and allowed the accused nurse, who had denied the allegation, to write the hospital’s internal incident report, state health records show.
Santa Rosa Behavioral staff members did not notify police, CPS or CDPH, with an employee later telling state health insectors that “adolescent patients made accusations of sexual abuse all the time.”
Akers said she worked with the victim during a subsequent admission and recalled her breaking down in tears as she recounted being molested. “I was heartbroken,” Akers said. “Nobody was listening to this patient, and that was so disheartening.”
The male nurse continued working at the hospital for at least two months, until a second female patient made a nearly identical claim, records show. Hospital administrators concluded that both assaults “appeared to have happened,” with a facility director admitting that it was “not a good idea to have the perpetrator complete an incident report against himself.”
In response, CDPH asked administrators to write additional plans of correction. Yet even as those fixes were supposed to be implemented, CDPH uncovered another string of violations.
Nurses fresh out of school were forced to care for up to 19 patients each, twice as many as Signature’s own policies allowed. “It became very overwhelming,” a caregiver told CDPH. “It became more about tasks than providing the care patients needed.”
Critical jobs were skipped. In August 2020, the hospital turned away a 21-year-old woman seeking treatment for insomnia and auditory hallucinations because it didn’t have space, but failed to screen her or coordinate her transfer to another emergency facility. She died by suicide less than 24 hours later.
The following month, a hospital employee took a patient at risk of suicide to a local emergency department and didn’t keep track of her. The patient ended her life in an ER bathroom.
CDPH found that there was no evidence Santa Rosa Behavioral had maintained promised reforms. Administrators had not trained employees to directly report safety issues to the health department and they were still inadequately staffing their units, leaving workers and patients in potentially unsafe situations.
Yet even after issuing seven more deficiency reports in 2020 and 2021, state officials again chose not to fine Santa Rosa Behavioral. Instead, the hospital submitted seven new plans of correction.
An illustration from a piece of a CDPH document.jpeg
Alex Tatusian/The Chronicle
“That is not a fine situation, that is a ‘shutting down the facility and figuring out what is happening there’ situation.”
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Amid this regulatory back and forth, a 17-year-old boy arrived at Santa Rosa Behavioral in the middle of the night after being placed on an involuntary psychiatric hold for worsening depression and suicidal thoughts.
His mother, a nurse, told the Chronicle that she and her husband felt lucky there was an open bed, even if it was far from their South Bay home. “I trusted my peers, I trusted my profession, that my child would be taken care of,” she said.
But two days after being admitted in April 2021, the boy was sexually assaulted by his roommate. His parents sped through San Francisco and up Highway 101 to get their child.
According to a state deficiency report completed in January 2022, the boy told police officers that his roommate forced him into oral sex after he tried to push him away and told him to stop. During the assault, the boy said he “‘froze and didn’t know what to do,’ and felt like he could not leave the room because he was ‘really scared,’” health inspectors wrote.
It was at least the fifth reported sexual assault inside the hospital that health inspectors had linked to deficient care.
Again, Santa Rosa Behavioral did not report the incident to police or child protective services, and waited to notify CDPH for about a month, until after the boy’s family had filed their own complaint.
A hospital director told health inspectors that she initially did not know she needed to contact authorities. Internal policies “revealed no procedure for reporting incidents” to the health department, even though the facility had previously been cited for similar problems and had agreed to correct them.
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A former patient who was sexually assaulted at Santa Rosa Behavioral poses for a portrait on Sept. 11, 2024.Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle
The South Bay family — which the Chronicle is not identifying in accordance with the newspaper’s policies on naming minors who have been sexually assaulted — is now suing Signature for negligence and fraud. The family alleges in court filings that the company jeopardized the teen’s health and safety and misled the public about the specialized care it was providing by understaffing its facility to maximize profits. Signature has denied the allegations.
“To me, if children are being sexually assaulted by other children at a facility, that is not a fine situation, that is a ‘shutting down the facility and figuring out what is happening there’ situation,” the boy’s mother said.
As part of the resulting plan of correction, hospital leaders said they would reeducate employees on their legal duty to report suspected child abuse and on how to identify patients at risk of “sexually acting out.” Staff would also check on patients more frequently — the hospital’s third time making a similar promise.
An illustration from a line in a CDPH document.jpeg
Alex Tatusian/The Chronicle
“The state’s obligation is to keep the public safe, and in my opinion, they are failing to do that.”
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Despite Santa Rosa Behavioral’s persistent patient safety violations, in 2022, CDPH approved the hospital’s request to add 49 new beds. Local officials said the expansion was critical to meet the growing need for mental health services in the region.
As before, more patients led to more problems.
The riot that brought police officers on May 10, 2023, was among a cascade of violations that would overwhelm the hospital over the next year and a half.
A few days before the uproar on the adolescent unit, workers found a male patient unresponsive, but still breathing, with his shirt wrapped around his neck. The patient had already tried to hang himself in the hospital multiple times, but the staff member who was supposed to watch him had been assigned a workload that was impossible to manage, the state found.
CDPH inspectors discovered Santa Rosa Behavioral had stopped employing hallway monitors, despite agreeing to staff those extra workers in prior plans of correction, and had canceled a contract with its security company after guards were injured and quit.
Between March and December of last year, state health inspectors completed four additional investigations.
A patient held her head and sobbed after another patient punched her. “It looked like the patient was in shock. This was a significant event considering her vulnerable state.”A patient held her head and sobbed after another patient punched her. “It looked like the patient was in shock. This was a significant event considering her vulnerable state.”A patient held her head and sobbed after another patient punched her. “It looked like the patient was in shock. This was a significant event considering her vulnerable state.”
“He looked upset, like he was checking for blood or an injury, and ran back to his room.”“He looked upset, like he was checking for blood or an injury, and ran back to his room.”“He looked upset, like he was checking for blood or an injury, and ran back to his room.”
“Patient stated that she is having flashbacks to the assault when she closes her eyes,” nurses documented. “She still has a headache and her body is sore.”“Patient stated that she is having flashbacks to the assault when she closes her eyes,” nurses documented. “She still has a headache and her body is sore.”“Patient stated that she is having flashbacks to the assault when she closes her eyes,” nurses documented. “She still has a headache and her body is sore.”
“Patient was attacked by other patients on the unit leading to patient’s mother wanting to remove her from the hospital.”“Patient was attacked by other patients on the unit leading to patient’s mother wanting to remove her from the hospital.”“Patient was attacked by other patients on the unit leading to patient’s mother wanting to remove her from the hospital.”
A patient “was feeling very anxious and unsafe due to being on the same unit as the peer that attacked her.”A patient “was feeling very anxious and unsafe due to being on the same unit as the peer that attacked her.”
“Patient reported having thoughts of wanting to harm self-due to feeling unsafe on unit.”“Patient reported having thoughts of wanting to harm self-due to feeling unsafe on unit.”“Patient reported having thoughts of wanting to harm self-due to feeling unsafe on unit.”
The lack of documentation makes it seem like patient-to-patient assaults, “are normal.”The lack of documentation makes it seem like patient-to-patient assaults, “are normal.”The lack of documentation makes it seem like patient-to-patient assaults, “are normal.”
“In the quiet room, this nurse noticed that the patient was bleeding from the head.”“In the quiet room, this nurse noticed that the patient was bleeding from the head.”“In the quiet room, this nurse noticed that the patient was bleeding from the head.”
“Patient left the facility for a rape kit, accompanied by a Mental Health Technician and police officer.”“Patient left the facility for a rape kit, accompanied by a Mental Health Technician and police officer.”“Patient left the facility for a rape kit, accompanied by a Mental Health Technician and police officer.”
A patient who had been sexually abused was able to have a sex with another patient and told staff “it hurt her emotionally since it reminded her of the past.”A patient who had been sexually abused was able to have a sex with another patient and told staff “it hurt her emotionally since it reminded her of the past.”A patient who had been sexually abused was able to have a sex with another patient and told staff “it hurt her emotionally since it reminded her of the past.”
A patient was crying and saying he, “hated this place and he needed to get out of here.”A patient was crying and saying he, “hated this place and he needed to get out of here.”A patient was crying and saying he, “hated this place and he needed to get out of here.”
A hospital director said she “guessed that she was the abuse coordinator for the facility.”A hospital director said she “guessed that she was the abuse coordinator for the facility.”
A patient stood up in the dining room and walked over to another patient and, “just checked him, I mean really punched him.”A patient stood up in the dining room and walked over to another patient and, “just checked him, I mean really punched him.”A patient stood up in the dining room and walked over to another patient and, “just checked him, I mean really punched him.”
After assaulting a peer, a patient “began punching the walls in the quiet room and making holes.”After assaulting a peer, a patient “began punching the walls in the quiet room and making holes.”After assaulting a peer, a patient “began punching the walls in the quiet room and making holes.”
“He has lost muscle mass as a result of being confined to his room,” a physician wrote about a patient. “His life is really quite terrible.”“He has lost muscle mass as a result of being confined to his room,” a physician wrote about a patient. “His life is really quite terrible.”“He has lost muscle mass as a result of being confined to his room,” a physician wrote about a patient. “His life is really quite terrible.”
Last year, CDPH documented an increasing number of assaults and other deficiencies at Santa Rosa Behavioral that had overwhelmed staff and patients.
Chronic understaffing had again saddled some nurses with caseloads double those prescribed by hospital policy, allowing problems to escalate into crises, state health records show.
A man who had been in the hospital for years was confined to his room for so long that his muscles atrophied. A second patient had to be rushed to a local emergency department after attempting suicide when staff members did not monitor her, then fabricated their observation logs to make it appear they had.
And a woman with a pacemaker to treat heart problems died of a heart attack after employees did not check on her for about eight hours overnight. The patient was left alone for so long that by the time mental health workers discovered her, she had developed rigor mortis.
“The state’s obligation is to keep the public safe, and in my opinion, they are failing to do that,” the woman’s daughter told the Chronicle in an interview. She only learned that health officials had cited the hospital when reporters contacted her.
CDPH also documented nearly two dozen physical or sexual assaults involving patients, all of them connected to deficient care. “Everyday at the morning daily meeting I hear about patient-to-patient assaults,” the hospital’s director of nursing told inspectors.
Despite years of promises, the state concluded that the hospital’s abuse prevention strategy “was mostly done by word of mouth.” The director of nursing said workforce training was “basically non-existent.” And staffing guidelines that had been refined through numerous state interventions were ignored.
CDPH did not issue any fines. Nor did the agency halt admissions to protect future patients. Instead, state health authorities leaned on a familiar tool.
They asked for a plan of correction.
Credits
Reporting by Joaquin Palomino and Cynthia Dizikes. Visuals by Gabrielle Lurie, Brontë Wittpenn and Sandy Huffaker. Illustrations by Huanhuan Wang. Editing by Ryan Gabrielson, Demian Bulwa and Lisa Gartner. Visuals editing by Nicole Frugé. Data editing by Dan Kopf. Design by Sophie D’Amato. Design and development by Stephanie Zhu. Design and development editing by Alex K. Fong. Graphics, illustrations, design and development editing, and art direction by Alex Tatusian. Audience by Jess Marmor Shaw. Copy editing by Linda Houser/Tafur.
www.sfchronicle.com
Violence and neglect plague the Santa Rosa Behavioral Healthcare Hospital. The California Department of Public Health has chosen not to meaningfully intervene.
SEIU 2015 & CA Union Bureaucrats Pushed CA Prop 1 With Newsom That Pushed More Privatization & Outsourcing of Mental Health Leading To Violence, Torture & Murder For Profit
The Chronicle is investigating California’s for-profit psychiatric hospitals. Here are our key takeaways so far
www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/investigation-forprofit-psychiatric-hospitals-20185271.php
Many patients entering California's for-profit psychiatric hospitals have faced erratic care, violence and, at times, deadly neglect instead of receiving stabilizing treatment, a San Francisco Chronicle investigation found.
Huanhuan Wang/Special to the Chronicle
By Cynthia Dizikes, Joaquin Palomino
Feb 26, 2025
With California engulfed in a mental health crisis, the Chronicle set out to examine a critical and rapidly expanding part of the health care system: for-profit psychiatric hospitals. Reporters Joaquin Palomino and Cynthia Dizikes spent over a year investigating the facilities where tens of thousands of people routed by depression, drug addiction and psychosis are sent for stabilizing treatment every year, including a 15-year-old girl who died in San Francisco after being subjected to chaotic conditions and deficient care in several of these for-profits. They also conducted hundreds of interviews, reviewed thousands of pages of records and did a unique analysis of state data comparing hospital spending on patients to quality of care.
The Chronicle found:
• Incidents of violence, neglect and patient self-harm are rampant within many of California’s for-profit psychiatric hospitals, the majority of which are run by just four companies. Over the past six years, hundreds of their patients have reported being beaten and sexually assaulted, and at least 17 have died amid deficient care.
Failed to death: A Chronicle investigation
California is committing more and more people to psychiatric hospitals run by for-profit companies. Behind locked doors, the results are devastating. This story is part of an ongoing investigative series.
Part 1: The mystery shocked San Francisco. This is the story of the 15-year-old girl found dead in a driveway
Part 2: California is embracing psychiatric hospitals again. Behind locked doors, a profit-driven system is destroying lives
Part 3: Violence and neglect plague a Bay Area psychiatric hospital. California has left its patients in danger
• The state’s 21 for-profit psychiatric hospitals treat a majority of children in crisis despite racking up an outsized share of serious safety violations. In many cases, patients reported that erratic treatment destabilized them more or worsened their conditions.
• For-profit operators spend less than half as much on direct patient care as the state’s nonprofit psychiatric hospitals and locked psychiatric units in general hospitals, despite treating similar patients. By employing fewer nurses and other frontline workers, the companies banked roughly $440 million in profits combined from their California facilities between 2018 and 2022, much of it from taxpayer-funded insurance.
• The volume of harmful incidents is far greater than what’s documented in state citations. The Chronicle obtained police dispatch records for five of the for-profit facilities from a recent two-year period, detailing more than 160 assaults involving patients. That’s 16 times greater than the number state regulators had cited, which only include incidents reported to the agency that inspectors substantiated and linked to regulatory violations.
• State law requires the California Department of Public Health to set specific minimum nurse-to-patient ratios in psychiatric hospitals that could help address many of the failures linked to understaffing. But the Newsom administration has not yet done so.
• The California Department of Public Health has not meaningfully intervened when it found patients were gravely harmed or died as a result of the hospitals' failures. The department has cited for-profit facilities for hundreds of serious safety lapses since 2019, but only collected modest fines from three. Not once during this period has the agency halted admissions anywhere.
If you have information about for-profit psychiatric hospitals in California, email cdizikes@sfchronicle.com and jpalomino@sfchronicle.com
The Mental Health Crisis, Newsom's Prop 1 & Privatization
youtu.be/cCf5i-9WEx4
Chronicle Investigation: Chaos at California for-profit psychiatric hospitals
www.sfchronicle.com
California is sending more people to for-profit psychiatric hospitals. With fewer workers and weak state oversight, the results have been devastating.
Trump Union Busting Against AFGE TSA Members Is To Privatize Federal Workforce For Billionaires
AIRPORT SECURITY OFFICERS DENOUNCE TRUMP ADMIN DUMPING CONTRACT
www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article302299384.html
The local union representing transportation security officers denounced President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday morning outside the Robert T. Matsui United States Courthouse over its decision to strip employees of collective bargaining rights.
Earlier this month, Secretary Kristi Noem announced the Department of Homeland Security had terminated a contract between the federal government and Transportation Security Administration employees to remove “bureaucratic hurdles” and make the organization more efficient.
Transportation security officers in Northern California are represented by the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1230. The union approved a new contract with the federal government last year.
James Mudrock, president of AFGE Local 1230, called Noem’s action a “stab in the backs of officers, many of which are veterans.”
The union filed a federal lawsuit last week in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington to block the contract’s termination. Airport security officers are covered by the same personnel system that governs most federal employees, known as Title 5.
DHS said eliminating the collective bargaining agreement would modernize the workforce.
“Thanks to Secretary Noem’s action, Transportation Security Officers will no longer lose their hard-earned dollars to a union that does not represent them,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement earlier this month.
Mudrock noted that a majority of airport security officers are union members. Members voluntarily pay dues, he added.
Ending AFGE’s contract is Trump’s first step in his attempt to privatize the TSA, Mudrock said, which is a recommendation included in the conservative policy agenda Project 2025. Mudrock said Trump’s billionaire allies can make a lot of money by replacing the TSA with private security firms.
Those contractors are more likely to cut corners, pay workers lower wages and give employees fewer benefits than unionized federal employees, Mudrock said.
Thomas Regpala, a veteran with over two decades of service with TSA, said the Trump administration’s actions could cost him and his colleagues their jobs. The TSA previously celebrated Regpala for helping a stranded passenger at Sacramento International Airport — now the veteran feels left behind by the federal agency.
“I fear that the billionaires are just waiting in wait to gobble up contracts at airports and throw us to the curb like our big boss threw a puppy into the gravel pit,” Regpala said, referring to Noem’s admission that she killed a family dog she believed was untrainable.
Regpala was joined by Mary Becker, another security officer, and her seven-week-old.
The new mom is currently on parental leave, but Noem’s latest action made Becker fearful that she might lose this benefit, which the union helped secure, while she’s away from work and caring for her newborn.
TSA union denounces Trump administration’s canceling collective bargaining agreement
www.sacbee.com
The union said stripping workers of representation was President Donald Trump’s first step toward privatizing airport security.
Striking San Jose ATU 265 Workers Rally For Their Strike Action & Managment Stalling
www.facebook.com/ATU265/videos/996888498594897
Trump to Pick Union-Busting Attorney for Key Labor Law Position
The National Labor Relations Board general counsel is a key policymaker shaping labor law. Crystal Carey, an attorney at anti-union firm Morgan Lewis, is the apparent choice.
prospect.org/labor/2025-03-17-trump-pick-union-busting-attorney-key-labor-law-position-nlrb/
BY DAVID DAYEN MARCH 17, 2025
The Trump administration will choose a partner at the notorious anti-union law firm Morgan Lewis to be the next general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, multiple sources tell the Prospect.
Crystal Carey is a former NLRB official from 2009 to 2018; she started as an intern with the Board and moved up to senior counsel, working on the Board and general counsel sides of the office. She became a partner last year at Morgan Lewis, which has been one of the most powerful management-side law firms in the country since the 1950s. Morgan Lewis attorneys have been involved in some of the most prominent labor battles in America since then, from the 1981 air traffic controllers strike to efforts by McDonald’s to resist the Fight for $15.
One of Morgan Lewis’s biggest current clients is Amazon, which used algorithmic management and surveillance tactics to prevent unionization at its warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, in 2021. Amazon also has an active lawsuit that seeks to declare the NLRB unconstitutional.
Carey, who is in her early forties, has been at Morgan Lewis since leaving the NLRB in 2018, mostly as a trial attorney. She became a partner last October. While union sources had heard that Carey’s name was “in the mix” for the critical NLRB general counsel position, she is not a high-profile person in the labor world.
It is unclear when the announcement will formally be made. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The selection would confirm that any talk of the second term of President Trump being in any way pro-labor was largely lip service or sheer fantasy. That was already fairly clear with the mass gutting of federal agencies though large-scale firings of workers, actions often at odds with federal employee protections. But hiring an attorney of a go-to union-busting law firm to administer labor law in the U.S. makes Trump’s position crystal clear.
Though some labor leaders, like Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, have hailed the confirmation of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who has in the past supported legislation that would make it easier for unions to win workplace elections, the reality is that labor secretary is not a big policymaking job, at least not compared to the NLRB general counsel. The general counsel sets priorities for NLRB cases, which govern union elections and rights in the workplace. The Labor Department has important priorities as well, but the work to end the slide in union density in the United States really begins at the NLRB.
The Teamsters did not return a request for comment on Carey’s pending appointment.
Under Biden’s GC Jennifer Abruzzo, the NLRB pursued an agenda that sought to level the balance of power between unions and management in America. During Abruzzo’s tenure, the NLRB reversed 12 decisions from Trump’s first term that weakened worker rights and made it harder to organize. It also banned “captive audience” meetings (where workers must listen to anti-union arguments from management), outlawed the practice of management claiming that unionized workers cannot bring grievances directly to supervisors, and determined that if a company commits unfair labor practices during a union election, then the union is automatically recognized and the employer must begin bargaining of a first contract. Another Abruzzo-led initiative, allowing workers to recover greater damages from being illegally fired for protected activities, was overturned in the courts.
When he took office in January, Trump fired Abruzzo and Board chair Gwynne Wilcox. The latter discharge was deemed illegal by a federal court, and Wilcox is now back on the job, giving the NLRB a temporary 2-to-1 Democratic Board majority. But Trump has the ability to appoint two members to the Board, putting it in Republican hands again.
With Carey as the general counsel, the Board will likely go about reinstating actions from Trump’s first term, and reversing Abruzzo’s initiatives. Given her background, Carey can be expected to be a cipher for management’s wishes.
There are certainly some people in the White House and the Republican Party more broadly who are not as rigidly opposed to organized labor, and may even support collective bargaining in certain cases. But that’s certainly not the prevailing opinion, as the installation of a Morgan Lewis lawyer as NLRB general counsel reinforces. If this appointment is any indication, the next four years look bleak for workers seeking to organize.
David Dayen is the Prospect’s executive editor. His work has appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. His most recent book is ‘Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power.’
Trump to Pick Union-Busting Attorney for Key Labor Law Position
prospect.org
The National Labor Relations Board general counsel is a key policymaker shaping labor law. Crystal Carey, an attorney at anti-union firm Morgan Lewis, is the apparent choice.