Free Republic

Air traffic controllers who lost communication with aircraft at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, leading to hundreds of delays for more than a week, are taking special government leave for traumatic situations to recover from the stress. The controllers in Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control, which coordinates planes arriving at Newark, “temporarily lost radar and communications with the aircraft under their control, unable to see, hear, or talk to them,” on Monday April 28, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association said in a statement shared with CNN. The connectivity between Federal Aviation Administration radar and the frequencies that...

Trump administration officials fired more than 300 staffers Thursday night at the National Nuclear Security Administration — the agency tasked with managing the nation’s nuclear stockpile — as part of broader Energy Department layoffs, according to four people with knowledge of the matter. Sources told CNN the officials did not seem to know this agency oversees America’s nuclear weapons. An Energy Department spokesperson disputed the number of personnel affected, telling CNN that “less than 50 people” were “dismissed” from NNSA, and that the dismissed staffers “held primarily administrative and clerical roles.” The agency began rescinding the terminations Friday morning. Some...

Federal agencies across Washington are finding ways to keep funding frozen even after judges last month temporarily blocked the White House’s effort to pause trillions of dollars in federal assistance. FEMA has clawed back $80 million intended to help New York City house migrants. The EPA has paused more than 30 grant programs, including some providing money for schools to buy electric buses. And USAID contractors say hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts have not been paid. Trump officials say the suspensions are lawful and comply with President Donald Trump’s executive orders, arguing he has broad powers over federal...

President Donald Trump’s offer to most federal employees to resign now and be paid through September stunned the workers who received it – angering some, confusing many and raising questions about whether the offer is even legal. When a US Department of Agriculture staffer based in Mississippi received the deferred resignation offer on Tuesday, they read through it, laughing because it was just “nonsensical,” and then deleted it. “I’ve got my whole entire life invested in the federal government,” said the staffer, who also spent time in the military. “I’m not going to throw everything away.” Across the United States,...

Washington CNN — More than 1,100 employees at the Environmental Protection Agency received notice this week that they were deemed to be on probationary status and warning they could be fired immediately, according to an email obtained by CNN. Probationary employees receiving the email have been working at the agency for less than a year. The emails began to go out on late Wednesday afternoon, according to an EPA union official.

(CNN) Vivek Ramaswamy, the incoming co-chair of President-elect Donald Trump’s commission to cut government spending, has set his sights on money the Biden administration is dispersing in its final days in office, including a key loan to a rival company of his commission co-chair, Elon Musk. Last week, the Department of Energy announced a $6.6 billion conditional loan commitment to Rivian, the electric vehicle startup that is a nascent competitor to Tesla, Musk’s $1 trillion car company. Ramaswamy says that loan and others like it are “high on the list of items” that he will look to claw back once...

Much of the federal workforce is on edge and bracing itself for the likelihood its ranks will be purged when President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Trump, who has derided civil servants as agents of the “deep state,” promised on the campaign trail to reinstate a 2020 executive order known as Schedule F, giving him the power to commence mass firings of nonpartisan federal employees who might spoil Trump’s partisan plans. “The objective is to create space to put loyalists in what were, what are still, career civil service positions,” former Trump appointee Ronald Sanders – who resigned over Trump’s politicization...