Executive Departments 4

[GreyhoundFan]

Hooray: "New EPA administrator: ‘Science is back’"

Quote

Michael Regan has bold aspirations, and a long to-do list, as President Biden’s newly confirmed Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

He wants to hasten the nation’s shift to cleaner forms of energy, make transformational investments in communities battered by decades of pollution, and improve air and water quality around the country. But to accomplish any of that, the 44-year-old administrator said Monday, he must first help the EPA get its groove back.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do, starting with rebuilding the staff morale and getting all of our staff back to feeling as if they matter, their voices matter,” Regan said in his first interview after being sworn in last week. “We really have to restore the scientific integrity and the utilization of data, of facts, as we move forward and make some very important decisions.”

Just days into his tenure, the former North Carolina environmental official has embraced a simple mantra as he faces the daunting task of translating Biden’s promises into actual policies.

“Science is back at EPA,” he said.

Congress kept the EPA’s budget largely stable during recent years, despite attempts by President Donald Trump to make deep cuts. Even so, a Washington Post analysis showed that during the first 18 months of the Trump administration, nearly 1,600 workers left the EPA, while fewer than 400 were hired. That exodus shrank the agency’s workforce to 14,172, a level not seen since the Reagan administration.

After being sworn in, Regan wrote a memo to EPA career staffers calling their work the “heart” of any economic recovery under Biden. Regan himself was once a career EPA employee, working there for more than a decade under both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations before returning to North Carolina as southeast regional director for the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group.

On Monday, Regan said he wouldn’t rule out the return of experts who fled the EPA as part of a hiring push under Biden.

“I’m under the assumption that there are a lot of people that walked out of EPA that would be extremely qualified for some of the positions we’ve advertised, and we welcome their return if they meet the criteria,” he said. “But that doesn’t exclude new and young scientists and engineers and data analysts and lawyers who have been longing to join a credible agency.”

Regan, who last week easily won confirmation by the Senate in a 66-to-34 vote, declined to offer specifics about which policies the EPA will pursue in the coming months. But he made clear that the agency already is beginning to revisit some of the Trump administration’s most consequential regulatory rollbacks.

Regan vowed to use the agency's considerable authority to tackle climate change on multiple fronts.

He said the agency will take another look at the Trump administration’s rollback of tailpipe emissions rules for new cars and trucks, as well as his predecessors’ efforts to revoke California’s long-standing authority to set its own fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles. That waiver had been granted under the Clean Air Act by previous administrations.

“I’m definitely a fan of statutory authority, and states’ rights and autonomy,” Regan said, adding, “The transportation sector is very important in our greenhouse gas goals.”

Regan said a federal court’s recent decision to vacate the Trump administration’s replacement of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan gives his team a “clean slate” to regulate the climate-warming pollution that results from burning coal and gas for electricity.

The Trump administration also maintained air quality standards for ozone and other pollutants that are less stringent than what many experts have recommended to protect public health. Regan said he is open to toughening those standards.

“We’re taking a look at how we enhance some decisions that we believe are not as protective as we think they should be,” he said.

Regan also indicated he will look closely at a ubiquitous class of chemicals known as polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, found in communities nationwide and linked to an array of health effects.

Last month, the EPA yanked from its website a toxicity assessment of one of these so-called forever chemicals, which persist for years in the environment. Regan said the study was “compromised by political interference.”

“That's just one example of many decisions that were made by the previous administration that weren't guided by the scientific evidence nor the recommendations made by our career staff,” he added.

He also said his staff is evaluating the agency’s response to the coronavirus pandemic under Trump. Former EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler temporarily waived some enforcement last spring, citing practical constraints during shutdowns.

Regan said the agency’s ability to permit regulated industries to stop monitoring hazardous emissions during emergencies ought to be used “sparingly.”

“It’s not as if it’s a blank check,” he said.

Regan returns to Washington with a reputation for seeking buy-in from all sides of environmental disputes, including industry. But Republicans are increasingly agitated with Biden’s climate plan, arguing that curtailing oil and gas drilling and pipeline construction will kill jobs. Some Republican attorneys general have already warned they will challenge actions they see as “unauthorized and unlawful” in court.

“Let me be very clear, I really liked meeting and getting to know Michael Regan,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said last week before voting against Regan’s confirmation. “He is a dedicated public servant and an honest man.”

“But this vote is not based on what Mr. Regan might do if he had his say,” she added. “This vote is about confirming someone to execute President Biden's agenda, which Mr. Regan said he would faithfully do. And I cannot support that agenda.”

Climate scientists, meanwhile, warn the United States and other countries have precious little time to deeply cut greenhouse gas emissions to forestall catastrophic, irreversible levels of global warming.

Even as he embarks on his new, high-profile role, Regan already has in mind how he would like his tenure to play out.

“I hope that EPA will be remembered in four years for righting the ship and really making significant strides on lowering the emissions from greenhouse gases, protecting our water quality, doing it in a way where we’re creating lots of jobs in a fair and equitable manner,” he said.

“If we can right this ship and start to achieve those goals and do it in a way with a rising tide for all communities in this country, I think we’ll be off to a good start.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I was talking to a friend who used to work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the DOI. She retired early because she couldn't stand working for Ryan Zinke. She told me she wishes she was back at work now with Deb coming on the job.

 

[fraurosena]

33 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I was talking to a friend who used to work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the DOI. She retired early because she couldn't stand working for Ryan Zinke. She told me she wishes she was back at work now with Deb coming on the job.

 

It's so lovely to see that she's wearing traditional dress for her swearing in!

By the way, maybe the department is going to rehire a lot of people who left during the Trump era, like they are planning to do at the EPA. If so, and providing she wants to, your friend might reapply and her wish could come true.

[GreyhoundFan]

3 hours ago, fraurosena said:

By the way, maybe the department is going to rehire a lot of people who left during the Trump era, like they are planning to do at the EPA. If so, and providing she wants to, your friend might reapply and her wish could come true.

She moved all the way to Arizona and doesn't want to move back to DC, so it's not going to happen.

[GreyhoundFan]

"EPA dismisses dozens of key science advisers picked under Trump"

Quote

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan will purge more than 40 outside experts appointed by President Donald Trump from two key advisory panels, a move he says will help restore the role of science at the agency and reduce the heavy influence of industry over environmental regulations.

The unusual decision, announced Wednesday, will sweep away outside researchers picked under the previous administration whose expert advice helped the agency craft regulations related to air pollution, fracking and other issues.

Critics say that under Trump, membership of the two panels — the EPA’s Science Advisory Board (SAB) and Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) — tilted too heavily toward regulated industries and their positions sometimes contradicted scientific consensus.

"Science is back," new EPA administrator says

The Biden administration said the move is one of several to reestablish scientific integrity across the federal government after what it characterizes as a concerted effort under the previous president to sideline or interfere with research on climate change, the novel coronavirus and other issues.

“Resetting these two scientific advisory committees will ensure the agency receives the best possible scientific insight to support our work to protect human health and the environment,” Regan said in a statement.

Environmental advocates cheered the decision, saying that remaking the composition of the panels is necessary after the Trump administration illegally barred academics who received EPA grants from serving on them.

Under Trump, the EPA had argued scientists who received research funding from the agency would not be able to offer impartial advice. But environmental and public health advocates, along with some former career officials within the agency, said the policy effectively elevated experts from industry while muzzling independent scientists.

The Trump administration ended up rescinding the restriction on grant recipients after being ordered to do so last year by a federal court. But it didn’t change any of its appointments after the ruling.

“It’s absolutely warranted,” Christopher Zarba, a retired EPA employee who directed the office that coordinates with scientific committees, said of the newly announced shake-up. “Lots and lots of the best people were excluded from being considered.”

He added that none of the people picked by Trump’s EPA chiefs, Scott Pruitt and Andrew Wheeler, were individually unqualified to serve. “However, the mix of people did not accurately represent mainstream science,” he said.

For example, Louis Anthony “Tony” Cox, who was tapped by Pruitt in 2017 to lead the advisory panel on air pollution, is a consultant who has worked for several government agencies but also for the oil, chemical and health-care industries.

Cox dismissed the EPA’s methods for tabulating the public health benefits of smog regulations as “unreliable, logically unsound, and inappropriate.” His position distressed many air pollution scientists, and two published a paper in the journal Science that warned Cox was trying to undo “the time-tested and scientifically backed” process that resulted in important public health protections.

The EPA is calling for new applications for the two panels. Nick Conger, an EPA spokesman, said advisers dropped from the committees are “eligible and encouraged to reapply” if they choose. Normally, the agency would have asked for new applications for a handful of the positions in October.

The action Wednesday is one of several steps Regan says is necessary to rebuild the scientific integrity of the EPA and restore staff morale.

Regan recently, for instance, revived an EPA webpage on climate change deleted during Trump’s first weeks in office. And In a memo to staff last week, Regan said the agency is reviewing policies that impeded science and is encouraging career employees to “bring any items of concern” to the attention of scientific integrity officials as they review Trump-era actions.

“When politics drives science rather than science informing policy,” Regan wrote to staff, “we are more likely to make policy choices that sacrifice the health of the most vulnerable among us.”

On the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, Trump-picked members advised the EPA to keep the standards for ozone at the current level, even as public-health experts outside the agency argued they should be tightened to help protect poor and minority communities. The agency followed the committee’s advice and declined to issue stricter standards for the smog-forming pollutant, which has been linked to asthma and lung disease.

The clean air panel, meanwhile, was split on whether to recommend tougher rules for particulate matter, another pollutant emitted by power plants and cars. The agency ultimately decided last year against ratcheting up the rules, even as evidence accumulated that soot raised the risk of dying of covid-19.

In an interview earlier this month, Regan suggested the agency may revisit those decisions for acceptable pollution levels. “We want to take a close look at ozone. We want to take a look at all the NAAQS [National Ambient Air Quality Standards] that we believe are questionable.”

Genna Reed, a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a research and advocacy group, said reconstituting the panel will aid in any reassessment of air quality standards.

“It only makes sense for the agency to go back to the drawing board,” she said.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I love how Pete trolls the former guy!

[47of74]

People from the fuck face administration are starting to be held accountable.

 

[47of74]

The former guy government: Corruptus in Extremus. 

Quote

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo violated federal ethics rules governing the use of taxpayer-funded resources when he and his wife, Susan, asked State Department employees to carry out tasks for their personal benefit more than 100 times, a government watchdog has determined. 

POLITICO obtained a copy of the report on the Pompeos, which was put together by the State Department’s inspector general’s office. 

The report has been long awaited in Washington, where Pompeo is seen as a potential 2024 Republican presidential contender. The investigation into his and his wife’s actions came to light last year after Pompeo engineered the firing of Steve Linick, then the inspector general of the State Department.

By digging through emails and other documents and interviewing staff members, investigators uncovered scores of instances in which Mike or Susan Pompeo asked State Department staffers to handle tasks of a personal nature, from booking salon appointments and private dinner reservations to picking up their dog and arranging tours for the Pompeos’ political allies. Employees told investigators that they viewed the requests from Susan Pompeo, who was not on the federal payroll, as being backed by the secretary.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

He fit right in with the former guy: "Now we know what Pompeo’s ‘swagger’ at the State Department was really about"

Quote

SECRETARY OF STATE Mike Pompeo adopted the term “swagger” to describe the department’s style under his leadership. It was a curious approach to diplomacy, and it led to some notable disasters, including the alienation of the United States from its closest allies on the U.N. Security Council. Now it emerges that Mr. Pompeo’s swagger extended to his personal affairs: An inspector general’s investigation found more than 100 instances where the secretary or his wife ordered staff to carry out errands or conduct their private business.

As Mr. Pompeo and wife, Susan, apparently saw it, no task was too small to be delegated to U.S. government employees: depositing and picking up the dog from boarding; making hair appointments; delivering flowers to friends; preparing their Christmas cards. Staff also were used to save the family money. One was ordered to use discretionary funds to buy gold nut bowls as gifts for people who hosted private dinners for the Pompeos, while another arranged a hotel discount for their son when he joined them at a U.S. Military Academy football game. When he was asked about it, Mr. Pompeo allowed that “as a general matter, he likes to ‘pay less’ for things if he can.”

The secretary breezily — or maybe, swaggeringly — told the inspector general that there was nothing wrong with all this because it took up little of his staff’s time and was done by them out of friendship. But the political appointee who did most of the work reported that she saw it as part of her duties — particularly as the assignments came to her in emails sent to her department account. As for time spent, according to the inspector general, two staffers, including a senior Foreign Service officer, reported to Foggy Bottom on a weekend to prepare the Christmas cards, while the political aide “spent time over three months” arranging a visit to Washington, D.C., by a Kansas political group that had supported Mr. Pompeo when he was a member of Congress.

That, in the end, is what “swagger” was really about: advancing Mr. Pompeo’s personal political career. As he considered a run for senator in Kansas, as well as a possible 2024 presidential candidacy, Mr. Pompeo used the secretary of state’s platform and resources to nurture his political profile and connections. He staged a series of closed private dinners at the department with business leaders and conservative figures, spending at least $43,000, including more than $10,000 for embossed pens handed out as favors. He devoted his official Twitter account to boasts about his accomplishments.

Meanwhile, Mr. Pompeo devastated State’s staffing and morale. Hundreds of career officers resigned during his tenure, and surveys showed a sevenfold increase in the percentage of employees “who felt they could not disclose a suspected violation of law, rule and regulation without fear of reprisal.” No wonder: Mr. Pompeo induced President Donald Trump to fire the inspector general who first opened an investigation of his abuses, Steven Linick. Mr. Pompeo claimed he did not know of the probe at the time and that he ousted Mr. Linick because he was not “performing a function in a way that we had tried to get him to.” Now we know exactly what it means to “perform” for Mr. Pompeo.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

In contrast to the self-enriching "swagger" of Pompous Pompeo, Deb Haaland is trying to help vulnerable people: "Violence against Indigenous women is ‘a crisis.’ Deb Haaland’s new Missing & Murdered Unit could help, advocates say."

Quote

Growing up in Canada, Agnes Woodward, who’s Plains Cree and originally from Kawacatoose First Nation, always knew that her family cared deeply about missing and murdered Indigenous women. In the 1990s, she watched as her aunt Mona and a few others began trying to draw attention to the lacking police response when Indigenous women went missing: They would hold up images of missing friends on street corners. In 1992, they organized the first march in Vancouver in memory of missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW).

Then, in 2015, the Canadian government approached Woodward’s family to ask if they wanted to add her aunt, Eleanor (Laney) Ewenin, to the list it was compiling as part of its National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. The entire family gathered to talk over the decision and concluded that “if we step up and we tell our story” and it helps any other families, “then it’s our responsibility to do so,” Woodward recalled. Her mother, uncle and aunts had been taken from their parents in Canada’s so-called Sixties Scoop, a period that lasted into the 1980s during which the Canadian government removed Indigenous children from their parents’ care and placed them with foster families. Laney had been separated from the other children, and in 1982, when she was just 23, she was killed.

Woodward, now 38, became a seamstress and began designing ribbon skirts in honor of her aunt and other missing women, eventually creating the company ReeCreations in 2018. Her ribbon skirts quickly became a continentwide symbol of the MMIW movement.

Those ribbon skirts have also recently made headlines. On March 18, when Deb Haaland made history as the first Native American sworn in as U.S. interior secretary, she wore a bright blue ribbon skirt — sewn by Woodward herself. Two weeks later, Haaland announced the formation of a new Missing & Murdered Unit (MMU) within the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The MMU will leverage federal resources to support investigations into unsolved cases of missing and murdered Indigenous people, while also working on active investigations and gathering data about the crisis, according to the Interior Department. The unit builds upon a presidential task force known as Operation Lady Justice that was established by the Trump administration in 2019, but which some advocates say failed to adequately consult with tribal communities.

Organizers such as Woodward celebrated the opening of the Missing & Murdered Unit, noting that an Indigenous official was able to announce in two weeks what they have been demanding for decades. But she also cautioned that the design of the unit will determine its success. Advocates have called for resources to be directed not only toward investigations, but also toward prevention and healing, emphasizing that tribal consultations will be key to the initiative’s work.

“We know that we belong here. We know we belong in every aspect of decision-making,” Woodward said. “It’s not reconciliation, but it’s a step in that direction.”

In the United States, homicide is the third-leading cause of death among Native American women. They are also murdered at a rate as high as 10 times the national average, according to the Justice Department. The National Crime Information Center includes 1,500 American Indian and Alaska Native missing persons, but according to the Urban Indian Health Institute, most cases go unreported. When information on missing persons is collected, law enforcement often omits or misclassifies racial data — making it difficult to assess the true extent of the violence, according to advocates.

“Violence against Indigenous peoples is a crisis that has been underfunded for decades. Far too often, murders and missing persons cases in Indian Country go unsolved and unaddressed, leaving families and communities devastated,” Haaland said in a news release about the MMU.

Tribes have no jurisdiction over missing and murdered cases because they are classified as major crimes. Annita Lucchesi (Cheyenne), executive director of the Sovereign Bodies Institute, said that’s a problem: Other countries are consulted when their citizens are murdered on U.S. soil, and that should be the case when it comes to tribal nations, she said.

“The U.S. government and the Canadian government have treaty obligations by international law to provide the resources that they promised they would to tribal nations, whether that be for education, health care or to address violence and crime,” she said.

Addressing those data gaps and supporting ongoing investigations is one of the first steps the MMU can take, according to advocates.

“What we need to be moving forward with is having database systems that can talk to each other, are interoperable, and that tribal nations can get access to,” said Abigail Echo-Hawk (Pawnee), director of the Urban Indian Health Institute.

Echo-Hawk noted that a key gap in resources she has seen in government intervention is prevention services.

“We have to have a focus on prevention, which means decreasing risk factors for sexual assault, domestic violence, all of the things that increase whether or not a person would go missing, murdered or be trafficked,” she said. “We have to go upstream and stop the violence, not just treat the symptom.”

Based on forthcoming research that Echo-Hawk conducted with 122 Indigenous survivors of sexual assault, more than 90 percent of survivors specifically want culturally grounded intervention and healing services. But developing those services is difficult because many Indigenous communities are deeply impoverished, according to Echo-Hawk.

“We consistently hear that families are lacking resources and not just the resources to find their loved one or to close a murder case, [but also] the mental health resources, the financial resources, the housing resources, all of the things that affect a family when a loved one goes missing and murdered,” she continued.

Advocates have urged that the MMU consult closely with tribal nations — a step they say its predecessor, Operation Lady Justice, failed to do. Representatives for the Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.

As Haaland’s Missing & Murdered Unit launches, Lucchesi and Echo-Hawk agreed that they’re cautiously optimistic — but that it will be important for advocates to hold the unit accountable to their goals. Plus, Lucchesi noted, there will be deep-seated skepticism to overcome: She said the vast majority of the hundreds of families she’s worked with have had “really negative experiences” with law enforcement.

“I don’t have a lot of faith in that system and its ability to be salvaged into something useful for our people,” she said. “What I argue for is restoration and recognition of tribal sovereignty.”

Justice for missing and murdered Indigenous people’s families is ultimately an ongoing conversation, advocates say.

Woodward, for one, said she “can tell you in so many ways what injustice feels like. But what does justice look like or feel like? I don’t know.”

That the answer remains unclear means that more work is necessary, according to Woodward: We have to “keep pushing for that, until we figure out what that means to us,” she said. “Until the families who have experienced injustice after injustice feel that they are getting what they’re searching for.”

 

[fraurosena]

This is quite scary. "..the threat of domestic violent extremism within the Department of Homeland Security."

The fact that they are launching an internal review is a sign that they believe this threat actually exists... 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Good: "Biden fires head of Social Security Administration, a Trump holdover who drew the ire of Democrats"

Quote

President Biden on Friday fired Social Security Commissioner Andrew Saul, a holdover from the Trump administration who had alienated crucial Democratic constituencies with policies designed to clamp down benefits and an uncompromising anti-union stance.

Saul was fired after refusing a request to resign, White House officials said. His deputy, David Black, who was also appointed by former president Donald Trump, resigned Friday upon request.

Biden named Kilolo Kijakazi, the current deputy commissioner for retirement and disability policy, to serve as acting commissioner until a permanent nominee is selected.

But Saul said in an interview Friday afternoon that he would not leave his post, challenging the legality of the White House move to oust him. As the head of an independent agency whose leadership does not normally change with a new administration, Saul’s six-year term was supposed to last until January 2025. The White House said a recent Supreme Court ruling gives the president power to replace him.

Saul disputed that. “I consider myself the term-protected Commissioner of Social Security,” he said, adding that he plans to be back at work on Monday morning, signing in remotely from his New York home. He called his ouster a “Friday Night Massacre.”

“This was the first I or my deputy knew this was coming,” Saul said of the email he received from the White House Personnel Office Friday morning. “It was a bolt of lightning no one expected. And right now it’s left the agency in complete turmoil.”

Saul’s firing came after a tumultuous six-month tenure in the Biden administration during which advocates for the elderly and the disabled, and Democrats on Capitol Hill pressured the White House to dismiss him. He had clashed with labor unions that represent his 60,000 employees, who said he used union-busting tactics. Angry advocates say he dawdled while millions of disabled Americans waited for him to turn over files to the Internal Revenue Service to release their stimulus checks — and accused him of an overzealous campaign to make disabled people reestablish their eligibility for benefits.

“Since taking office, Commissioner Saul has undermined and politicized Social Security disability benefits, terminated the agency’s telework policy that was utilized by up to 25 percent of the agency’s workforce, not repaired SSA’s relationships with relevant Federal employee unions including in the context of COVID-19 workplace safety planning, reduced due process protections for benefits appeals hearings, and taken other actions that run contrary to the mission of the agency and the President’s policy agenda,” the White House said in a statement.

Saul, 74, a wealthy, former women’s apparel executive and prominent Republican donor — who served on the board of a conservative think tank that has called for cuts to Social Security benefits — had overseen one of the biggest operations in the federal government since his 2019 Senate confirmation. The Social Security Administration pays out more than $1 trillion a year to about 64 million beneficiaries, which include seniors, the disabled and low-income Americans.

In the interview, Saul described himself as “very upset” about his sudden dismissal and cited two years of progress modernizing the agency’s day-to-day operations on his watch, including digitizing online payments, replacing old information technology systems and reining in a workforce that had abused telework before the pandemic force him to send employees home to work.

“There was terrible abuse,” he said.

As word spread of Saul’s possible dismissal, congressional Republicans on Friday accused the administration of politicizing the Social Security Administration and noted that Saul had been confirmed by the Senate by a wide margin.

“This removal would be an unprecedented and dangerous politicization of the Social Security Administration,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tweeted.

The Social Security Administration, which began in 1935, was later folded into Health and Human Services but regained it status as an independent agency in the mid-1990s to insulate it from politics, with a commissioner’s six-year term designed to straddle White House administrations. Under the Social Security Act, an incoming president can fire the commissioner only for cause.

However, the Supreme Court issued two rulings recently that strengthened executive power when it comes to independent agencies led by a single appointee.

Last year, the court ruled that a law protecting the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from presidential supervision violated the separation of powers, leading Biden to remove Trump’s appointee his first day in office. The court issued a similar decision in late June, ruling that the president has the authority to remove the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Biden replaced the Trump-appointed agency head on that same day.

The June decision raised the prospect that the head of the Social Security Administration would be next.

“The SSA has a single head with for-cause removal protection,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in an opinion, “so a betting person might wager that the agency's removal provision is next on the chopping block.”

After Biden was inaugurated, Saul shifted course somewhat to align his actions with the new president’s priorities. He boosted outreach to vulnerable populations to help them access benefits after applications plunged during the coronavirus pandemic and agreed to renegotiate contracts with the unions.

But his continued tenure alarmed many Democrats, who noted that the Trump holdover was in a position to put his imprint on one of the government’s biggest agencies.

“President Biden needs someone who can fulfill his promise of protecting and strengthening Social Security,” Rep. John B. Larson (D-Conn.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Social Security subcommittee, said in an interview Thursday. “Here’s the nation’s most important insurance benefit.”

 

[Cartmann99]

11 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

But Saul said in an interview Friday afternoon that he would not leave his post, challenging the legality of the White House move to oust him. As the head of an independent agency whose leadership does not normally change with a new administration, Saul’s six-year term was supposed to last until January 2025. The White House said a recent Supreme Court ruling gives the president power to replace him.

Saul disputed that. “I consider myself the term-protected Commissioner of Social Security,” he said, adding that he plans to be back at work on Monday morning, signing in remotely from his New York home. He called his ouster a “Friday Night Massacre.”

If he wants to get a lawyer and sue for wrongful termination, that's his right, but in the meantime, someone needs to make damn sure he can't log into the system and wreak havoc.

Also, if you give an interview about being fired on the same Friday afternoon that you lost your job, that means you can't call it a "Friday Night Massacre" unless you follow that up with an announcement that you are a Time Lord.

[GreyhoundFan]

I like the news coming out of Biden's Cabinet Members so much more than the news from the previous corrupt group:

Of course, I've seen lots of nastiness from reich-wingers who are unhappy that a gay couple has adopted.

[church_of_dog]

10 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I like the news coming out of Biden's Cabinet Members so much more than the news from the previous corrupt group:

Of course, I've seen lots of nastiness from reich-wingers who are unhappy that a gay couple has adopted.

I like the hospital bed touch 

[GreyhoundFan]

No surprise here: "Trump’s Bureau of Land Management HQ move reduced Black employees, created mass vacancies, report says"

Quote

As Trump officials were moving the headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management from Washington, D.C., to Colorado two years ago, Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, issued a stark warning to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt: The department risked a “significant legal liability” by driving Black employees from an agency that was overwhelmingly White.

Among a host of troubling diversity data, Grijalva wrote in a letter obtained by The Washington Post, “One of the most alarming statistics is that there are only 312 Black/African American employees nationwide at the agency, less than 3.5 percent of the BLM workforce” of about 9,000 people.

If the headquarters move went ahead and Black employees suffered a disparate impact, Grijalva warned, Interior could be sued by its own employees under the Civil Rights Act. He described it as a “significant legal liability that could rival the cost of the entire relocation.”

Bernhardt did not respond to a request for comment.

While Black employees have not sued the bureau responsible for overseeing more than 245 million acres of public lands, a new Government Accountability Office report found that its relocation reduced the number of Black employees, as The Post reported last month. Dismantling the D.C. office also drove out the bureau’s most experienced employees and created widespread staffing shortages, investigators concluded.

“Increased vacancies, and the details used to temporarily fill those vacancies, sometimes led to confusion and inefficiency, according to staff members we interviewed,” the report found.

Despite the warning, the Trump administration pushed ahead with the relocation to Grand Junction, Colo. — which is now being reversed by President Biden. The move did dramatically worsen diversity, with more than half the Black employees at the headquarters retiring or quitting rather than accepting the move to Colorado.

The agency’s major reorganization was also done out without a “strategic workforce plan,” laying out how the changes would advance the agency’s goals, the report added.

As a result, “BLM lacks reasonable assurance the agency will have the workforce necessary to achieve its goals in managing millions of acres of public lands,” the report said.

While Trump administration officials argued that moving the BLM West would put employees closer to the lands they manage — primarily located in 12 Western states — current and former employees have described how, in fact, the move derailed the agency by breaking up teams that once worked closely together and scattered people across several Western cities. Most of those ordered to move West chose to quit or retire rather than accept new jobs.

The GAO report adds new detail about problems created by the move, particularly in vacancies created by the upheaval and in its impact, across the total workforce, on Black employees.

At the time BLM announced its relocation in July 2019, the headquarters staff of about 550 positions had 121 vacancies, the report found. Over the next year, that number of vacancies shot up to 326, before gradually declining to 142 as of May 2021, the most recent available data.

Current and former BLM employees have told The Post that ongoing uncertainty over where headquarters jobs would be located has made it hard to fill many positions.

The upheaval also drained the agency of its most experienced career civil servants: the percentage of BLM staff with at least 25 years of service at Interior declined from 24 percent to 17 percent during the Trump administration.

“In our interviews with 13 BLM staff members, almost all told us that the loss of experienced staff negatively affected their offices’ ability to conduct its duties,” the report said. “For example, one staff member said that the loss of institutional knowledge about laws and regulations meant that BLM was not able to provide knowledgeable input on proposed rules and legislation.”

The report also documents changes in the racial makeup of the agency before and after Trump’s time in office.

The Post last month reported that the number of Black employees within BLM headquarters dropped by more than half from the start of Trump’s term to the start of Biden’s. There were 126 Black employees in headquarters positions when Trump took office. When his term ended, that number had fallen to 55, according to department data. The total number of non-White HQ employees fell from 202 to 116 between January 2017 and January 2021, a decline of 43 percent, according to department data.

The GAO report looks at the racial changes across the wider 9,000-person agency.

In that larger group, the number of Black employees in the agency fell from 306 in January 2016 to 287 in January 2021, a decline of 6 percent. The largest increase in minority representation came among Asian employees, whose numbers rose during that period from 161 to 190, a gain of 18 percent. Overall, however, Asians still represented just 2 percent of the entire workforce. By the start of Biden’s term, White employees made up 80 percent of the staff, a decline of about 2 percent from January 2016.

While Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced in September that the bureau’s headquarters would return to Washington while Grand Junction would serve as its Western hub, the details of that plan still need to be worked out with lawmakers.

 

[church_of_dog]

In more good Dept of Interior news, the first Native person will lead the National Park Sevice.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

No big surprise: "Ryan Zinke broke ethics rules while leading Trump’s Interior Dept., keeping improper ties with land developers, watchdog finds"

Quote

While serving as Interior Department secretary under Donald Trump, Ryan Zinke broke federal ethics rules repeatedly by improperly participating in real estate negotiations with the chairman of the energy giant Halliburton at the time and other developers, according to a government official with knowledge of an inspector general investigation to be released Wednesday.

Interior Department Inspector General Mark Greenblatt found that while Zinke was in office, he sent dozens of emails and text messages, held phone calls and met in his office with developers to discuss the design of a large commercial and residential development in his hometown of Whitefish, Mont., said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the report has not yet been released.

Zinke continued to represent his family’s foundation in the negotiations for nearly a year, investigators found, even after committing to federal officials that he would resign from the foundation and would not do any work on its behalf after he joined the Trump administration.

Zinke could not be immediately reached for comment Wednesday.

Now a leading Republican candidate to win a newly drawn congressional seat in Montana this fall, Zinke also lied to an agency ethics official who questioned him about his involvement in the negotiations, according to the report. Zinke told the staffer that his participation in the project was minimal and limited to tax preparation, saying he no longer represented the foundation.

But after investigators issued subpoenas for the developers’ emails and text messages, they found that Zinke had communicated with the developers 64 times between August 2017 and July 2018 to discuss the project’s design and plans for a brewery. He met with the developers in his office at Interior Department headquarters in the summer of 2017 and, afterward, gave them a personal tour of the Lincoln Memorial and had dinner with them.

Investigators also concluded in the 32-page report that Zinke misused his official position by directing some of his staff to set up a meeting with the developers and print out documents related to the project. Federal officials are generally prohibited from assigning their employees tasks related to their private business.

The inspector general did not find that Zinke violated federal conflict-of-interest laws because his communication with the developers centered on a private business deal, rather than official Interior Department matters. They also did not find evidence that Zinke had used his position to benefit Halliburton or for his own financial gain, or that his staff tried to conceal his continuing involvement with the development team.

The Post first reported that inspector general referred the matter to the Justice Department in 2018. But the case remained open until last summer, when prosecutors declined to press criminal charges.

Zinke, 60, a former Navy SEAL who rode to work on horseback on his first day at Interior, served one term in the House of Representatives before he joined Trump’s Cabinet. A major proponent of oil and gas drilling, as well as coal mining, he resigned under pressure less than two years later under an avalanche of investigations into his conduct.

With Trump’s endorsement and strong name recognition in a swath of western Montana Trump carried by seven points in 2020, Zinke is widely favored to win his home state’s new House seat.

The investigation into his real estate dealing began in the summer of 2018, after Politico reported that he had remained involved in the project while in office. This raised conflict-of-interest concerns because the project involved a development group funded by David J. Lesar, the then-chairman of Halliburton, which stood to benefit from policies Zinke oversaw encouraging oil and gas drilling on public lands.

Lesar’s company planned to build a large development along the Whitefish River, with shops, a hotel and a brewery. Zinke’s family foundation, run by his wife, Lola, had agreed to donate land for a parking lot. Known as 95 Karrow, the project had the potential to increase the value of multiple parcels of land the Zinkes owned nearby.

By 2018, Zinke’s wife had rescinded the letter of intent to donate land for the parking lot, investigators found.

Zinke declined investigators’ requests to meet with them. When they asked him for an interview, he refused.

The Whitefish land deal was one of at least 15 inquiries launched into alleged misconduct by Zinke. The investigations included one by the inspector general into his decision to deny two Connecticut tribes a permit to operate a casino; multiple inquiries into his travel expenses and whether he violated agency policy by allowing allow his wife to ride in government vehicles; and questions about his management of the department, including an investigation into a National Park Service report that removed any reference to climate change.

The casino case, which was referred to the Justice Department for potential criminal charges, is still pending.

Government investigators ultimately closed most of the other inquiries without reaching a finding that Zinke had violated ethics rules. In other cases, Interior Department officials refused to cooperate.

But the slew of inquiries strained his relationship with White House officials, who pressured him to resign when the Whitefish investigation was referred to the Justice Department for a possible criminal investigation. Zinke blamed his departure in a private resignation letter on “vicious and politically motivated attacks” and said he could not “justify spending thousands of dollars defending myself and my family against false allegations.”

Zinke touted himself as a Republican in the model of Theodore Roosevelt. But he worked to weaken existing environmental protections and shrink national monuments established by previous presidents. Trump scaled back two national monuments in Utah — Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante — and Zinke called on him to curtail the boundaries of several others.

Zinke voiced suspicions that career staffers at the department were undermining his policies, telling a group of oil and gas executives that a third of Interior Department employees were disloyal. He abruptly reassigned dozens of senior executives.

Among the quirks of his tenure was his revival of an arcane military ritual that required a security staffer to hoist a special secretarial flag on the roof of the agency’s headquarters in downtown Washington whenever he entered the building. When the secretary went home for the day or traveled, the flag — a blue banner emblazoned with the agency’s bison seal flanked by seven white stars representing the Interior Department bureaus — came down.

Zinke’s official portrait, which hangs at headquarters, shows him riding a horse in front of a tree-covered butte, a scene inspired by a photograph taken of him Bears Ears. President Biden restored full protections to it and Grand Staircase-Escalante last fall, at the urging of tribal activists and conservationists.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Can you imagine Steve Mnuchin or any other TFG administration bigwig traveling in economy?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is great!