Consequences of firing government employees - USDA says it accidentally fired officials working on bird flu and is trying to rehire them

[essentialsaltes]

‘Catastrophic threat’ to startup of massive Hanford nuclear cleanup plant rumored​

Rumors were flying Monday that the future of radioactive waste treatment at Hanford’s massive vitrification plant might undergo a major change.

The Energy Communities Alliance, relying on reporting by E&E News by Politico, said that Roger Jarrell had been fired Monday from his position of principal deputy assistant secretary of the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management.

That agency oversees environmental cleanup of the Hanford nuclear site in Eastern Washington from Washington, D.C.

DOE is currently required under a federal court consent decree to start showing by Oct. 15 that it can turn some of the 56 million gallons of radioactive waste in underground tanks into a stable, but still radioactive, glass form at the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant, or vitrification plant. The plant has been under construction for 23 years.

“I think they want to kill (the Waste Treatment Plant) altogether, even though it’s (close to being operational),” EandE News quoted the anonymous source as saying.

See also from 2018:

Trump plans to reclassify nuclear waste - Make America Glow Again

The proposal by the U.S. Department of Energy would lower the status of some high-level radioactive waste in several places around the nation, including the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state — the most contaminated nuclear site in the country. Reclassifying the material to...

www.christianforums.com

 

[essentialsaltes]

Newark airport outage last week lasted 60-90 seconds, ATC screens went dark: Sources​

In the air traffic control recordings obtained by ABC News, you can hear an air traffic controller telling pilots that "approach lost all the radars. Three of the four radar screens went black and they have no frequency."

Trump begins firings of FAA air traffic control staff just weeks after fatal DC plane crash​

The impacted workers include personnel hired for FAA radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance, one air traffic controller told the Associated Press.

Travel chaos as Dallas closes BOTH airports with spill over to at least 20 across America​

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed that a catastrophic system failure at the Dallas TRACON facility triggered 'one in, one out' emergency procedures at key hubs and spilled over into at least 20 additional major US airspaces.

'This is a developing nationwide disruption,' the FAA said in a bulletin, confirming technicians were still investigating the cause of the breakdown, which affected radar, radio, and approach systems - the core tools of airport coordination.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Travel chaos as Dallas closes BOTH airports with spill over to at least 20 across America​

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed that a catastrophic system failure at the Dallas TRACON facility triggered 'one in, one out' emergency procedures at key hubs and spilled over into at least 20 additional major US airspaces.

'This is a developing nationwide disruption,' the FAA said in a bulletin, confirming technicians were still investigating the cause of the breakdown, which affected radar, radio, and approach systems - the core tools of airport coordination.

Accidentally cut cables to blame for DFW airport delays, cancellations Friday, officials say​

The FAA said the issue was an example of its outdated infrastructure and urged the modernization of its systems.

"Moving from aging, analog systems to more resilient, digital technology is critical to maintaining the reliability and resiliency of the national airspace system," the FAA said.

Further, the FAA specified that Friday's "disruption" was caused by "multiple failures" from Frontier Communications and oversight by FAA contractor L3 Harris.

In response to the FAA's statement, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted on X that he and President Trump would "make disruptions like these a thing of the past."

[Maybe Trump will restore Biden's infrastructure spending that he cut.]

 

[essentialsaltes]

Trump administration rehires hundreds of federal employees laid off by DOGE​

Hundreds of federal employees who lost their jobs in Elon Musk’s cost-cutting blitz are being asked to return to work.

Those who accept must report for duty on October 6 after what amounts to a seven-month paid vacation, during which time the GSA in some cases racked up high costs — passed along to taxpayers — to stay in dozens of properties whose leases it had slated for termination or were allowed to expire.

“Ultimately, the outcome was the agency was left broken and understaffed,” said Chad Becker, a former GSA real estate official. “They didn’t have the people they needed to carry out basic functions.”

Its return to work request mirrors rehiring efforts at ... several agencies targeted by DOGE. Last month, the IRS said it would allow some employees who took a resignation offer to remain on the job. The Labor Department has also brought back some employees who took buyouts, while the National Park Service earlier reinstated a number of purged employees.

A small cohort of Musk’s trusted aides embedded in GSA’s headquarters, sometimes sleeping on cots on the agency’s sixth floor, and pursued plans to abruptly cancel nearly half of the 7,500 leases in the federal portfolio. [many of these decisions were rolled back]

DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts,” which once boasted that the lease cancellations alone would save nearly $460 million, has since reduced that estimate to $140 million by the end of July, according to Becker, the former GSA real estate official.

[But at least there were some savings, right?]

As a result of the internal turmoil, 131 leases expired without the government actually vacating the properties, the official said. The situation has exposed the agencies to steep fees because property owners have not been able to rent out those spaces to other tenants.

[GAO plans a report on the GSA]

 

[essentialsaltes]

A judge ruled their firings were illegal. The government got to do it anyway​

On Sept. 12, U.S. District Judge William Alsup issued his final decision in a case challenging the Trump administration's mass firings of probationary employees, mostly those in their first year or two on the job.

In a 38-page order, Alsup wrote that the terminations, dating back to February, were unlawful. But he stopped short of requiring the government to reinstate workers. It was clear to him, he explained, that the Supreme Court would overrule such relief given recent decisions the court had issued on related matters. He also wrote that too much time had passed.

While the relief Alsup ordered fell far short of what Beck, the fisheries biologist, had hoped for, she is glad that he has ordered agencies to make clear, in official paperwork and letters to fired employees, that their terminations had nothing to do with their performance.

The letters [ordered by the judge from earlier stages of the case], indeed, say that she was not terminated because of her performance. The letters also say that the government is only providing such notice due to a court order, and that the government believes the order is "legally and factually erroneous" and therefore is appealing it.

This time, Alsup has given federal agencies until Nov. 14 to reissue the letters, without all the disclaimers.

 

[essentialsaltes]

National Weather Service at ‘breaking point’ as storm approaches​

The agency is struggling to maintain its weather forecasting operations due to significant staffing cuts.