Illegal should not be in quotes. The firings without due process is literally illegal.
When reading this, I initially thought people had been fucking executed.
They are saving that for sweeps week.
Honestly, would not be surprised if it happened. That’s where my expectations are, just maybe not so openly.
It’s in quotes because it’s directly quoting someone (the USAID official).
What they said was accurate and doesn’t need quotes around a single word unless it is implying that it might not literally be true. If they had said ‘illegal purge’ then sure, the quotes would make sense because purge isn’t defined in law.
The person also said refused but that word isn’t in quotes. That was literally true and didn’t need quotes either.
“I refused and have provided Acting Administrator [Jason] Gray with written notification of my refusal,” Gottlieb continued. “I have recommended in that written notification that his office cease and desist from further illegal activity.”
If you think Common Dreams is trying to downplay the illegal nature of the firings and not just following a normal journalistic practice, you have lost the plot. You can see quotes used in headlines like this all the time, like here.
Yes, that is an example of a phrase in quotes being a clear quote as opposed to a single word.
BBC News: How an AI-written book shows why the tech ‘terrifies’ creatives
Washington Post: Trump says a ‘valve’ can solve California’s water woes. Experts say it’s not true.
New York Times: Trump Order Pushes Universities to ‘Monitor’ Protesters on Student Visas
There is so much shit with reporting to actually be mad about, using quotation marks to indicate a direct quote isn’t it.
The only person who is mad here is you.
If you’re going to misrepresent what I said that badly while completely ignoring that this is, in fact, a widespread and standard headline format seen across many publications then I guess we’re done here 👍
Note Stephen Miller went out of his way to attack the U.S. being a democratic Republic on CNN by aimlessly claiming 98% of their staff had donated to the candidate they didn’t like. As if they should lose their jobs for actively participating in their civic duty.
