#federal employees fired

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from In These Times:

President Donald Trump’s moves to slash the federal workforce have gutted the ranks of wildland firefighters and support personnel, fire professionals warn, leaving communities to face deadly consequences when big blazes arrive this summer.

​“There’s going to be firefighters that die because of this, there will be communities that burn,” said Steve Gutierrez, a union official who served 15 years as a firefighter with the U.S. Forest Service.

Gutierrez now serves as a labor relations representative with the National Federation of Federal Employees, which represents government workers. He said thousands of wildland firefighters have had their jobs thrown into limbo by Trump’s government-wide hiring freeze.

Brian Fennessy, chief of the Orange County Fire Authority and president of the California Fire Chiefs Association, echoed that concern. ​“The public needs to know they’re at risk,” Fennessy said. ​“If the public knew all of this, they would lose their minds.”

Federal agencies depend on an army of seasonal firefighters to fill their ranks during the months when wildfires are most active. Scott, a Forest Service firefighter with six years of experience in the Western United States, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym to avoid retaliation, is among those whose role has been thrown into uncertainty.

“It’s just going to be a disaster for the wildfire response this season,” he said.

Scott was slated to move to a new Forest Service fire station this spring. But following the federal hiring freeze, he was told by his captain that it’s unclear whether his new job still exists. Thousands of his colleagues are in a similar state of limbo.

In a statement to Stateline, the Forest Service said wildland firefighting jobs are considered public safety positions that are exempted from the hiring freeze, and the agency is working with the federal Office of Personnel Management on those positions. The agency did not respond to follow-up questions about the number of unfilled positions under review.

The U.S. Department of the Interior and Bureau of Indian Affairs did not grant Stateline interview requests. 

Federal agencies employed more than 17,000 wildland fire staffers last year, many of them in seasonal roles. This year, many of those workers had job offers rescinded — or had their transfers and promotions put on hold — just as they were set to begin onboarding and training for the 2025 fire season.

[piboss-314]

Trump's Mass Firing Okay

The judge agreed he had no ability to block Trump though he stated the following: “Cooper acknowledged that the Republican president’s second term “has been defined by an onslaught of executive actions that have caused, some say by design, disruption and even chaos in widespread quarters of American society.” And I say, that’s what it takes when half of our leaders are corrupt! Trump overcame…

[socialjusticeinamerica]

[karadin]

While you were sleeping ...

Federal judge puts back funding to USAID

Federal judge demands US put back health related federal websites

Judge Tanya Chutkan investigating Elon Musk's ability to run DOGE

The Department of Energy blocks firings of hundreds of employees who work for a key agency maintaining the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile

Federal judge stops Trump from sending detainees to Cuba

Federal judge stops Trump from shutting down Consumer Protection Agency

DOGE now at CMS which covers Medicare, Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program, and the Health Insurance Marketplace and are allied with Rachel Riley who worked at privatizing healthcare under Trump's first term.

Trump seeks to gut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and privatize the nation's weather reports and news

Judge blocks DOGE from sensitive Treasury Dept payment system, system being studied and re-programmed after DOGE invasion. expected to finish in August 25.

DOGE database on DOGE site found compromised, anyone can open and edit

Hundreds of federal workers illegally 'fired' from FEMA, DHS, CIS, CPA, the Coast Guard, USCIS, DHS' Science and Technology Directorate, the VA, Education and the US Forestry Service as well as half of the CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service, The Indian (Native American) Health Service. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the National Institutes for Health, HUD and NOAA.

There have been illegal mass firings of 'probationary' federal employees, those who have just taken on jobs up to those who have were hired 2 years ago.

After seven prosecutors quit refusing to give a Trump deal to NYC mayor, prosecutors put into room and all told they would be fired unless a prosecutor signed off on the deal - Eric Adams case has been dropped and as a result, Adams is allowing Trump immigration to invade NYC.

Trump signs order to block funding for schools that mandate Covid vaccines

Trump has already captured funds to house the homeless in NYC that were disbursed by FEMA

Elon Musk has charged the US gov 16 million to hack at government departments so far.

Elon Musk was granted a 400million deal to sell the US gov cybertrucks

Elon Musk is now going after NASA, despite being a contractor for NASA, Trump says Musk will 'police' his own conflicts of interest.

Trump inserts himself into 'negotiations' between Russia and Ukraine, siding with Russia and not guaranteeing that Ukraine will return to pre-war borders.

Apparently at negotiations, US handed President Zelenskyy a note (mafia style) seeking half of Ukraine's mineral rights, which Zelenskyy refused to acknowlege.

at Munich Security Conference VP Vance pushes the right-wing in Europe, shocking and angering NATO allies, changing US policy towards Putin and China. Trump now says there is no US intent to 'beat China'.

FAKE DOGE 'employees' appear in San Francisco city hall demanding access to state systems and data, leaving when confronted.

Trump makes himself head of the Kennedy Center for the Arts many staff resign and many artist pull out of sold-out shows.

[gwydionmisha]

The employees did nothing wrong. Republicans are hollowing out the FBI as part of the planned weaponization against anyone 47 or Kash Patel don't like.

[perplexed-penguin]

Source: r/fednews

I don’t usually have any good faith that people arguing what’s going on is a good thing will even listen to a response, but these are much more thought out and concise answers to possibly use. Please support federal workers, many probationary workers were just illegally fired from their positions.

[my-midlife-crisis]

EAT THE RICH

[saywhat-politics]

Gail Schechter, a former VA employee who was fired, and her attorney Pamela Keith speak to CNN's Sara Sidner about Schechter's lawsuit to get her job back. Sidner also asks about Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's (R-GA) controversial comments about federal workers.

[purple-dragon]

every time i open the news and see something new that trump and/or musk have said i have to fight the urge to just start screaming what do you MEAN dude. what in the shit are you TALKING about.

[nefretemerson]

trump keeps issuing the executive orders that i expect him to (they're Bad) but every now and then he throws a curve ball that doesn't Surprise me exactly but does make me say 'bro what the fuck.'

[wherepond]

Trump unhinged

Musk's clueless job slashing backfires again; principled protest resignations stymie Trump's agenda

Rachel Maddow highlights another set of firings of critical federal employees by Elon Musk's staff that doesn't seem to understand the government they're butchering, this time the administration is frantically trying to re-enlist crucial USDA workers focused on bird flu.

And as Musk's team continues to grab for more of Americans' personal data stored in federal systems, another top administrator has resigned in protest. 

Psychopaths seek revenge

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Grist:

On a recent Friday afternoon, Marie Richards sat in her living room in northern Michigan. She was having a hard time talking about her job at the U.S. Forest Service in the past tense.

“I absolutely loved my job,” she said. “I didn’t want to go.”

Richards, a citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, was a tribal relations specialist at the Huron-Manistee National Forests. In mid-February, she found out she was one of the some 3,400 workers who had been targeted for layoffs — an estimated 10 percent of the workforce — as part of the Trump administration’s move to cut costs and shrink the federal government.

Richards watched as some of her colleagues were laid off on February 14 — the so-called Valentine’s Day massacre, when the Trump administration laid off thousands of probationary employees, generally hired within the past two years. She got a call from her supervisor that Saturday informing her that she had been let go, too. The letter she received cited performance issues, even though she, along with others in a similar position, had received a pay raise less than two months earlier.

“None of us deserved this,” Richards said. “We all work hard and we’re dedicated to taking care of the land.”

The U.S. Forest Service, which stewards 193 million acres of public lands from Alaska to Florida, was in trouble even before Trump took office. Chronically understaffed, the service was already under a Biden-era hiring freeze, all the while on the front lines of fighting and recovering from back-to-back climate disasters across the country.

For now, workers with the Forest Service fear this isn’t just the end of the line for their dream careers, but also a turning point for public lands and what they mean in the United States.

“It’s catastrophic,” said Anders Reynolds with the Southern Environmental Law Center, a nonprofit that litigates environmental issues in the southeastern U.S. “We are losing an entire generation of talent and passion.”

The federal agency does more than ensure that Americans have a place to hunt, hike, fish, or paddle. In the South, forest workers played a key role in helping western North Carolina and other communities recover from impacts of Hurricane Helene. In the West, they’re taking on fire risk mitigation and fighting wildfires. They’re also involved in fisheries management in places like Alaska. Across the country, agency biologists and foresters are busy working to strengthen the over 150 national forests and 20 grasslands it monitors in the face of changing climate.

Increasingly, the service is getting spread thin. 

The agency has experienced a steady decrease in staffing over the last decade and the workers that remain are often overworked and underpaid, according to Reynolds.

“That means you’re going to see those campgrounds close, the trails go unmaintained, roads closed, you’re going to feel the effects of wildfire and hurricane recovery work that’s just going to remain undone,” said Reynolds. “Communities are going to struggle.”

[whimsicallywiddershins]

I'm a low level county government employee, and I have two seperate phones and computers, one for personal, one for work. I do not mix up the too. It was made very clear to me that if I ever used my personal phone for work stuff, my phone could be taken by my employer and searched for anything related to work.

My boss told me to be careful how I word emails, reports and general written communication because everything written down was saved, and the public could request to see it, so anything I wrote could be heavily scrutinized.

These are all things that were made very clear to me as an entry-level county employee. How the highest level of our government can get away with what they did is mind blowing to me.

[deathcupcake]

Doge staffer uploads employee filtering code & sensitive data to his public Github, apparently unaware it was public. (Now private)