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

[essentialsaltes]

Carnival does too.

We took our first (and last) Carnival Cruise last year. It supplanted Costa Cruises as the worst cruise line in our minds, and we were on the Costa Concordia (a few years before the skipper waved to his girlfriend from a little too close to shore).

 

[Aryeh Jay]

We took our first (and last) Carnival Cruise last year. It supplanted Costa Cruises as the worst cruise line in our minds, and we were on the Costa Concordia (a few years before the skipper waved to his girlfriend from a little too close to shore).

When I was in Italy last year, I purchased a T shirt that had the Port Captain's quote to the Concordia's Captain on it.

Something like "Please return to the Ship".

 

[essentialsaltes]

The FDA fired its tobacco enforcers. Now it wants them back.​

The agency asked laid-off workers to return after gutting the office that penalizes stores for selling tobacco to minors.

oops!

 

[A2SG]

The FDA fired its tobacco enforcers. Now it wants them back.​

The agency asked laid-off workers to return after gutting the office that penalizes stores for selling tobacco to minors.

oops!

Probably unrelated:

This Tobacco Giant Was The Biggest Corporate Donor To The 2024 Presidential Race

Billionaire business leaders shelled out during the presidential election, but corporations largely didn’t weigh in.

www.forbes.com

-- A2SG, sure there couldn't possibly be any quid pro quo here....

 

[essentialsaltes]

Budget cuts and bathrooms: An ongoing struggle at US national parks​

Federal officials have ordered national parks to keep amenities open, even though staffing remains an issue, leaving biologists cleaning toilets in some parks​

Citing staffing issues as a result of President Donald Trump‘s budget cuts, buyouts and layoffs across the National Park Service, multiple national parks have closed their toilets and visitor centers.

Trump has announced that parks will hire more seasonal workers than normal this summer, but park users across the country are already reporting intermittent staffing problems, maintenance issues and closed restrooms.

In an effort to minimize disruptions for visitors, the current Interior secretary, Doug Burgum, has ordered park service staff to keep open as many amenities as possible, in some cases requiring scientists, park rangers and supervisors to help clean toilets.

"This is a problem they made themselves," Brengel said. "They can fix some of it, but simply telling the park service they have to stay open isn't magically going to create people who work there."

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

What an embarrassment.

 

[essentialsaltes]

In the middle of a hepatitis outbreak, U.S. shutters the one CDC lab that could help​

After people started testing positive for hepatitis C in a coastal Florida town in December, state officials collected blood from patients, wrapped their specimens in dry ice and mailed them straight to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Ga.

The scientists at the lab knew what they were doing. Quickly, they analyzed the blood from Florida using their custom software and found that nine cases were genetically linked to the same pain clinic, where it was later discovered that a doctor was improperly reusing injection vials. By March, officials in Florida had restricted the doctor's medical license to limit the spread of the virus and packaged new patient samples to send to the CDC for testing, CDC employees told NPR.

But on April 1, the outbreak investigation was brought to a halt. All 27 of the lab's scientists received an email from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services informing them that they were losing their jobs.

The email said their duties were "identified as either unnecessary or virtually identical to duties being performed elsewhere in the agency." But the kind of genetic tracing that the CDC's lab performs is not conducted by any other lab in the United States or the world, experts interviewed by NPR said.

While the lab remains shuttered, ongoing investigations of current hepatitis outbreaks have been stalled, not just in Florida, but also in Oregon, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Georgia, according to CDC employees

Epidemiologists still working at the CDC have been trying to find another place that can do the analysis but have been unsuccessful, an agency employee told NPR.

"Commercial laboratories do not do this because it's not profitable," said the employee. "That's why no one really does it except for us."

Used to do it.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Judge orders halt to mass firings at Consumer Financial Protection Bureau​

About 1,500 employees were set to be jettisoned at the bureau.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has ordered an immediate halt to the planned firings of nearly 1,500 employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and is ordering the Trump administration to hand over communications and make top officials available for testimony to determine whether they deliberately violated one of her court orders.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Kansas City MO has long been a federal hub. The pain from DOGE’s cuts is everywhere​

One longtime Kansas City economic researcher said he believes the region could lose 6,000 good-paying federal jobs, which in turn would wipe out thousands of others in service industries.

 

[essentialsaltes]

DOGE layoffs of federal mediators leave grocery chain talks and other labor disputes in limbo​

In late March, Isael Hermosillo received an ominous message from his supervisor around 7 a.m. ordering him to cancel all his meetings scheduled that day.

Hermosillo rushed to notify several locals of the United Food and Commercial Workers union as well as attorneys for Albertsons and Kroger that he would not be able to attend a session in Buena Park later that morning — the third consecutive meeting set to be held that week for labor talks between major Southern California grocery chains and unions representing their workers. [

Hermosillo is among 130 federal mediators who were fired on March 26 after the Trump administration’s cost-cutting team, called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), effectively shuttered a 79-year-old federal agency that mediates labor disputes.

Though relatively small and obscure, the agency plays a vital role in helping to settle disputes so as to avoid labor unrest that can disrupt the free flow of commerce, according to former federal mediators and experts.

His termination caught employers and unions off guard — coming weeks after the labor contracts covering some 55,000 unionized grocery workers in California had expired — and threw a wrench in negotiations, said Kathy Finn, president of UFCW Local 770.

Finn said that because Hermosillo has worked on negotiations for many years, on multiple cycles since around 2017, both sides trust him and they engage him very early on in the process — which has helped to avert strikes.

[Competence and experience? Who needs it?]

Some major employers and trade associations [and unions] have been petitioning the Trump administration to reverse the decision

“No one will talk about this publicly,” Malin said. “They can see this hair trigger mentality in the White House. Everybody is afraid.”

 

[essentialsaltes]

Federal judge orders Trump administration to rehire all Voice of America and Radio Free Asia staff​

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to rehire all Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Network staff for now, and he said all congressional funding [i.e. a law] must resume to the outlets, which had been effectively shuttered by the administration.

[Radio Free Europe filed a separate lawsuit.]

 

[essentialsaltes]

Trump fires more immigration judges in what some suspect is a move to bend courts to his will
“These firings made no sense,” said Matt Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, the union representing the nation’s 700 immigration judges. “When you do the simple math, each judge does 500 to 700 cases a year. Most of them are deportation cases. So what he’s effectively done is he’s increased the already huge backlog that the immigration courts face.”

 

[essentialsaltes]

DOT invited more people to resign. Now it’s scrambling to keep some of them.​

 

[essentialsaltes]

Budget cuts and bathrooms: An ongoing struggle at US national parks​

It's not just the Park Service.

Campgrounds and visitor centers at federal lakes are closing amid Trump’s budget cuts​

Officials at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees the lakes and reservoirs and their amenities for boating, camping, hiking and sightseeing, said they are dealing with staffing shortages and other budgetary restrictions.

 

[RocksInMyHead]

It's not just the Park Service.

Campgrounds and visitor centers at federal lakes are closing amid Trump’s budget cuts​

Officials at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees the lakes and reservoirs and their amenities for boating, camping, hiking and sightseeing, said they are dealing with staffing shortages and other budgetary restrictions.

Yep. One of the biggest camping/outdoor recreation areas in my region is run by the Corps of Engineers. Pretty much all of their campgrounds are closed, which is going to have a huge impact on the local economy.

Huntingdon County Visitors Bureau clarifies impact of Raystown Lake closures, urges community action

HCVB works with stakeholders, public to communicate economic impact, advocates to keep facilities open HESSTON, PA - The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently announced the closure of some federal campgrounds at Raystown Lake due to executive-order driven staffing shortages.

raystown.org

 

[essentialsaltes]

Ready your Santayana quote:

ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON HISTORICAL DIPLOMATIC DOCUMENTATION​

--

Trump fires Doug Emhoff and other Biden appointees from Holocaust Museum board​

The former second gentleman, who is Jewish, said in a statement that "Holocaust remembrance and education should never be politicized."

But Trump has a mandate from the American voters to politicize the Holocaust and antisemitism!