HIGHLIGHTS
JUMP: EDUCATION | PUBLIC SERVICES | INFRASTRUCTURE | THE REST
First, the Good News
1) National: Joyce Vance suggests how civil servants should push back on Trump’s buyout offer. “Retired federal employees jumped in to make the point they don’t walk away from their oath when they leave their government jobs. (I feel the same way.) If all of this is starting to make you feel hopeful, you’re not alone. It’s been difficult to watch the absence of effective opposition to Trump’s first week in office, as he ignored and openly violated the law as only someone who thinks he’s immune from all consequences can. If the people who believe in our government, our democracy, are willing to come together and hold the line, what can’t we do together. Americans, it turns out, love their democracy.”
2) National/Think Tanks: Will the federal government’s payments system be privatized? To Elon Musk, onetime honcho at PayPal? Government by PayPal? The New York Times reports that “Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency access to the federal payment system late on Friday, according to five people familiar with the change, handing Elon Musk and the team he is leading a powerful tool to monitor and potentially limit government spending. (…) In a process typically run by civil servants, the Treasury Department carries out payments submitted by agencies across the government, disbursing more than $5 trillion in fiscal year 2023. Access to the system has historically been closely held because it includes sensitive personal information about the millions of Americans who receive Social Security checks, tax refunds and other payments from the federal government. (…) On Saturday, Mr. Wyden expressed concern that access to the payment system had been granted and pointed out Mr. Musk — a billionaire with a vast portfolio — has potential conflicts of interest. ‘Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk’s own companies. All of it,’ he wrote on social media.” Musk is a major government contractor, so presumably this would give him access to information on his competitors.
For background on the strategic crusade by the right wing to gain control of the federal payments system see David Dayen’s Presidential Bid to Take Over Federal Spending Is Four Years in the Making. “On the last day of Trump’s first term, Office of Management and Budget officials asserted that presidents can alter spending they don’t like. They’re returning to OMB to finish the job. (…) litigation is coming, and the people who will be in charge of OMB when it does are ready. Russell Vought, the nominee for director of OMB, and Paoletta, who has just been installed as its general counsel, were also in those positions at the end of Trump’s first term. In November 2020, the House Budget Committee, then chaired by Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY), issued a report on what it called OMB’s ‘systemic abuse of executive spending authority’” going back to 2018. Trump tried to use executive orders to block funding from ‘anarchist’ state and local jurisdictions, and tried to shift budgeting authority to political appointees. GAO repeatedly determined that Vought and Paoletta violated the impoundment rules; Trump was even impeached for illegally impounding Ukraine funding to force the country to investigate Joe Biden.”
The good news is that the people at the American Governance Institute are on the case and are calling for concerted, bipartisan political pushback. See the excellent piece, ‘Go Impound Sand,’” by Daniel Schuman, the institute’s executive director, and follow its newsletter, First Branch Forecast. “I’m not going to write 2,000 words on this,” says Schuman, “in part because I wrote about impoundment last July in the subtly titled article “The Trump Administration’s Plan to Seize Control of Spending—but I will quote from Matt Glassman’s excellent November article on the political ramifications of impoundment. ‘This is extremely important, because if the president can choose to not spend money that Congress has appropriated and directly demanded be spent, then the president can essentially cancel any program Congress sets up that requires funding. That’s an immense amount of power. (…) The power of the purse is the last and strongest power of Congress. The ability to appropriate will be greatly diminished, as the executive will have discretion to ignore any monies it doesn’t want spent, and the president will be able to leverage that reality to bargain for appropriations Congress would not otherwise want to provide. How does Congress ever negotiate on spending if the president has a post-enactment veto over all of it?’”
3) National: The National Employment Law Project (NELP) has launched Worker Policy Watch, a “source for accurate and reliable information on how federal policies are shaping workers’ rights—and what’s at stake for working people nationwide under the Trump administration.” NELP President and Chief Executive Officer Rebecca Dixon says “With misinformation everywhere, tracking federal policy changes that affect workers’ rights is more important than ever. (…) For 55 years, NELP has fought to advance workers’ rights and build a good-jobs economy. From securing wage protections to defending workers against corporate exploitation, NELP has been at the forefront of the fight for workers’ rights. Worker Policy Watch is our latest effort to ensure no harmful policy change goes unnoticed.
Now, with rapid policy changes threatening workplace protections, our Government Affairs team will maintain the Worker Policy Watch dashboard to:
- Track and analyze federal policy changes affecting workers
- Expose decisions that threaten workers’ protections
- Provide accurate, timely updates on what matters most
- Partner with advocates to fight back against harmful policies
Workers’ rights are under attack, and we can’t afford to stand by. Together, we can fight back and ensure a future where every worker is treated with dignity and respect.”
4) National: A second federal judge says the Trump administration must pause its federal spending freeze. “For now, the order blocks any suspension of federal dollars to the 22 states that were party to the suit — as well as the District of Columbia. In issuing the order, the court stated: ‘During the pendency of the Temporary Restraining Order, Defendants shall not pause, freeze, impede, block, cancel, or terminate Defendants’ compliance with awards and obligations to provide federal financial assistance to the States, and Defendants shall not impede the States’ access to such awards and obligations, except on the basis of the applicable authorizing statutes, regulations, and terms.’ New York’s Attorney General Letitia James, who is among those leading the suit, believes the temporary restraining order extends beyond the January 28 administrative stay as well as the rescinded OMB memo and is directed at President Trump’s actions that have called for a pause in federal funding.”
5) National/Illinois: Sarah Lazare and Rebecca Burns report in In These Times and Workday Magazine how Chicago residents and activists are frustrating ICE’s campaign of fear. “What is clear is that the PR push seems designed to incite fear. But at the Arise Chicago office in the West Town neighborhood, the mood was not one of defeat; all of the people who spoke with In These Times and Workday Magazine wanted to underscore that their community is trying to fight fear with preparation and organization. ‘Obviously there is nervousness,’ Klein said, as Arise Chicago members ambled into the office and greeted friends with smiles and hugs. ‘But we don’t see our community being paralyzed.’ Chicago’s sanctuary status means that no city agency, including the police department, is supposed to work with ICE to deport residents.”
6) National: In the face of a massive onslaught by the Trump administration to eliminate racial and gender justice initiatives at all levels of government, Dr. Julianne Malveaux, a member of the Black Commentator editorial board, says We Will Not Be Erased. “The 47th President has attacked our government like a bull in a China closet. He is doing his best to upend precedent and policy, as he promised that he would. He issued hundreds of executive orders, pardoned convicted criminals (like himself), manipulated the truth through websites, abolished DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion measures), putting hundreds on administrative leave, and caused more damage in just a few days than most do in a lifetime. Additionally, wholesale deportations of undocumented people have shattered families, disrupted communities, and upended some international relationships. (…) We will not be erased, no matter how hard they try. It’s a Sankofamoment for Black folks. Go back and get what has been instrumental to our survival heretofore. Go back and get the resilience. Go back and get the creativity. Go back to go forward. We will not be erased.”
7) National/California: Capital & Main reports that immigration advocates have established a hotline for those arrested under threat of deportation. The Los Angeles Rapid Response Network, “will focus on documenting ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) activities throughout Los Angeles and informing the community. The network has set up a hotline to field calls on immigration enforcement and provide immigration services and support referrals. Local groups will be called upon to investigate the reported ICE activity and verify the operations. (…) SEIU Local 721, with 95,000 members throughout Southern California, is also part of the LARRN network. Martin Manteca, the union’s organizing director, said the network intends to ‘protect the rights of our brothers and sisters who work hard to make their dreams come true and keep our economy strong.’ (…) The Immigrant Assistance Hotline to report ICE enforcement activity is (888) 624-4752.”
8) Florida: A job well done by a dedicated public servant. Bobby Stein, who fought JEA privatization, has stepped down from the JEA board.
9) National: What does Trump’s pause on spending mean for education? Hechinger’s has a summary. “After widespread confusion, the administration clarified that some education aid would not be affected, specifying Pell Grants and federal student loans. In addition, according to Education Department spokeswoman Madi Biedermann, the pause does not affect Title I funding that supports K-12 schools with many low-income students, IDEA grants for students with disabilities or other so-called formula grants. Many questions are still unanswered, however.”
10) National: “Can a charter school be religious?” The Conversion asks. “The Supreme Court decision about St. Isidore, a Catholic school in Oklahoma, could redraw lines around church and state in education. (…) If affirmed, the school would be the nation’s first faith-based charter – a sea change in education law, expanding the boundaries of government aid to faith-based schools. (…) Indeed, St. Isidore is a potential blockbuster. At stake is whether, or how far, the Supreme Court may continue to expand the boundaries of permissible government aid to faith-based institutions and their students – a trend I [Charles J. Russo—ed.] have often written about in my work on education law. (…) This time around, the justices will face two key questions. First, do the teachings of “a privately owned and run school constitute state action simply because it contracts with the state”? In other words, is a charter school a state actor? Second, the justices will weigh how the First Amendment religion clauses apply to a faith-based charter school.”
11) National: American Atheists say the Trump administration’s school privatization order defies the will of the people. “Again and again and again, voters have rejected school vouchers and other privatization schemes that attempt to defund and dismantle the nonsectarian public schools that 90% of U.S. families choose. The mandate from the American people to their state and federal lawmakers is clear: Support public schools. Earlier today, the Trump Administration issued yet another executive order that directly contradicts the will of the people. They justify their wholly unpopular position on school privatization by alluding to a “growing body of rigorous research.” This is a lie.”
12) National: The New York Times reports that the Trump administration is already purging officials in the Department of Education who they think support racial and gender justice policies in education. “Another staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of their tenuous position, said that diversity trainings were seen as routine around the department, with one two-day session having drawn around 300 people over several years. Several staff members said that Denise L. Carter, who was named acting education secretary until Mr. Trump’s nominee to lead the department is confirmed, had urged colleagues to attend sessions, offering them at no cost to participants as recently as last year. The letters sent on Friday included staff members who worked in the department’s Federal Student Aid office and others in the Office for Civil Rights. The department also notified all employees in the civil rights office who had joined recently and were still in a probationary period that their positions would be reviewed to determine their necessity.”
13) National: The National Education Association says Trump’s latest executive order overreaches to steal money from public school students to fund private school vouchers. NEA President Becky Pringle says, “Every student deserves fully-funded neighborhood public schools that give them a sense of belonging and prepare them with the lessons and life skills they need to follow their dreams and reach their full potential. Instead of stealing taxpayer money to fund private schools, we should focus on public schools—where 90% of children, and 95% of children with disabilities, in America, attend—not take desperately needed funds away from them. If we are serious about doing what is best for students, let’s reduce class sizes to give our students more one-on-one attention and increase salaries to address the teacher and staff shortages. The bottom line is vouchers have been a catastrophic failure everywhere they have been tried. President Trump is using his Project 2025 playbook to privatize education because he knows vouchers have repeatedly been a failure in Congress.”
14) Iowa: Jennifer Berkshire reports that “a proposed bill wants to ban students from learning Chinese (because it’s a gender neutral language) and free home schooled students from having to be taught social studies or science. The bill advanced this week.”
15) National: Trump’s funding freeze has left Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act funding in limbo, Construction Dive reports. “The move has thrown climate and infrastructure projects at various stages of development into uncertainty, as his agenda regarding federal government contracts and grants continues to rapidly evolve. (…) Its precise implications may not be fully understood for months, ‘and this uncertainty alone is likely to disrupt infrastructure projects and give rise to claims,’ according to an alert Crowell partners shared with clients Monday. ‘Whether the pause is temporary or becomes permanent, this action potentially could halt billions of dollars in obligated funding for infrastructure projects that already are underway, including those already under construction,’ according to Crowell. Another major announcement this week around funding has led to more confusion. A Monday internal memo from the Office of Management and Budget ordered a pause on all federal grants and loans, starting at 5 p.m. Tuesday. Federal agencies must temporarily halt funding and agency activities that may be implicated by the executive orders, ‘including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal,’ according to the memo. A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked the effort, CBS News reported.”
Trump’s defunding freeze, if it stands, will impact school infrastructure maintenance and improvement. “In schools, federal grants support services such as special education, Title I academic support programs, technology infrastructure and nutrition services, according to Coupeville [WA] Superintendent Shannon Leatherwood, who said that despite the fact the district has been vigilant and has maintained a contingency plan, the freeze came as a surprise. (…) In Oak Harbor, the city is waiting for $5.8 million in federal funds for a series of infrastructure improvement projects, Communications Officer Magi Aguilar wrote in an email. When the freeze was announced, the city considered the possibility of having to pause, scale back or cancel projects that residents have been waiting for. In a message sent to the community on Tuesday, Jessie Gunn from the Whidbey Community Foundation wrote that the memo did not provide clarity about how broad the order extended and what the expected long- and short-term impacts were. Because each federal agency was directed to submit information to the Office of Management and Budget by Feb. 7 regarding funding and activities through March 15, the executive director expected that meant there would be a 30- to 60-day pause on federal funding.”
16) National/California: Trump weighs in on water management in California, apparently to bolster his assertion that a lack of water from the north contributed to the wildfires. ‘It was not clear where federal officials intended to send the water that was being released from the dams. Local water managers said they were caught off-guard by the federal government’s plans on Thursday. Dan Vink, a water consultant who previously served as general manager of the Lower Tule River Irrigation District, called the situation ‘extremely unprecedented.’ Vink said local water officials heard Thursday afternoon that the Army Corps planned to ‘go from a fairly nominal release to channel capacity in two hours.’ (…) [Senator] Padilla asked Hegseth several questions, including who made the decision, how much advance notice was given to irrigation districts and local officials, and what impact the releases will have on communities and landowners. He also asked: “If the purpose of these releases is to help fight wildfires in Los Angeles County (which are already almost fully contained), what is the plan to transport this water to Los Angeles rather than let the water simply be discharged into Tulare Lake where it will evaporate?”
17) National: “Trump will take credit for Biden’s infrastructure wins—we shouldn’t let him,” writes Josh Cohen in technique. “Republican trifecta headed by the vindictive Trump will surely hack the BIL and IRA to pieces. Despite lambasting about frivolous spending, Republicans benefit the most from the BIL and IRA. Roughly 60% of BIL funding will flow to Republican states, and of the $206 billion green technology funding slated for distribution, a whopping 79% will end up in red districts. In fact, Georgia is the top recipient for clean tech funding between these two laws. Public investments like the BIL and IRA produce benefits across the political spectrum, despite a lukewarm Republican response to the BIL and not one Republican voting for the IRA. (…) Infrastructure quality improvement stands as perhaps the quintessential example of government intervention impacting the lives of everyday Americans. At the end of the day, the public wants potholes filled and clean water for their families. In line with this, Democrats must acknowledge policy successes like the BIL and IRA as central to their party platform, and shout it from the rooftops every time they achieve a win. Otherwise, someone else will be happy to take the credit.”
18) National: “In sprawl we trust.” Writing in Current Affairs, Allison Lirish Dean does a deep dive on the causes and consequences of spawl. “Recently, three planning colleagues separately told me that the left doesn’t care about sprawl anymore. But in the 1990s and early 2000s, progressive leaders couldn’t stop talking about it. Social demographer and former Minnesota state legislator Myron Orfield, in his 1997 book Metropolitics, showed how sprawl fuels social inequality as whiter, richer Americans sort themselves into suburbs, leaving behind increasingly poor inner cities and exacerbating an uneven distribution of public goods like housing, schools, and access to jobs and services. Labor advocates showed how sprawl hurts the labor movement by thinning out union density, making it harder to collectively organize. The solution, a broad anti-sprawl coalition argued, was a strong regional planning system that could pool resources across metropolitan areas and manage growth. But the promise of 1990s and early 2000s regionalism never fully materialized. A range of factors beyond the scope of this piece—including the 2008 financial meltdown—precipitated the decline of key organizations behind the progressive anti-sprawl movement (like the National Growth Management Leadership Project) and fueled a resurgent far right, which increasingly embroiled the left in culture wars.”
19) National: Nicol Turner Lee, a senior fellow at Brookings, explains how federal layoffs and the proliferation of AI set the stage for greater privatization and automation of the U.S. government. “In a 2005 blog on the importance of federalism, the late Brookings scholar, Pietro S. Nivola stated: “For the often indiscriminate preoccupation of national policymakers with the details of local administration is not just wasteful; it can be irresponsible.” But these efforts to reduce the federal workforce also come with actions to modernize it, which ultimately may result in privatization of government services through increasing automation of job roles that will be eviscerated and outsourcing of certain government functions. Automation may come sooner than expected. (…) The federal government is massive, and no one would disagree that opportunities to make it leaner are perhaps overdue. Public units need to become more efficient and effective. But changes embedded in the opaqueness of decision-makers, and driven by politically motivated issues are not the way to serve the American consumer of government services; too much is at stake, including taxpayer dollars. Further, policymakers need to be sensitive to the impact of possible changes on the existing workforce who represent the talent pool necessary to maintain order. Doing otherwise can result in widespread disruption, generating chaos and ineffectiveness.”
20) National: “Donald Trump goes to war with his employees,” The Economist reports. “The aim is transparently to get federal workers who do not like Mr. Trump to leave. (…) Were Mr. Trump to make these changes stick—a questionable prospect—it would amount to ‘probably the most fundamental alteration of the civil service system since 1883’ says Don Moynihan, of the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan (a verdict many in the White House would love). The president appears to have little interest in the idea that most government officials should be non-partisan specialists whose expertise is deployed to keep the public safe, among other benefits. Under Mr. Trump’s plan, decisions about hiring and firing would be made by his political appointees. According to Max Stier, of the Partnership for Public Service, a charity which works to improve government, Mr. Trump is ‘tearing apart the civil service’ so as to recreate ‘the spoils system’ of government that persisted until the end of the 19th century. That was a model whereby new presidents came in and immediately distributed jobs to their pals as a reward for supporting their election campaigns. Will he succeed? This seems unlikely, says Larry Jacobs, of the University of Minnesota.” [Sub required]
21) National: The Trump administration’s campaign to purge officials concerned with promoting racial and gender justice—often lumped under the rubric of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility—goes well beyond the U.S. Department of Education (see above), Government Executive reports. “OPM has received lists of the relevant employees from agencies and is passing that data on to the White House, Government Executive has learned. An exhaustive list with detailing the number of impacted employees governmentwide was not made available, though VA’s 60 employees represents about 0.01% of its workforce. Other agencies contacted by Government Executive did not make the data available. ‘The Department of the Interior is expeditiously executing the president’s executive order,” a department spokesperson said. Agencies notified employees last week of their placement on administrative leave and told them that their programs ‘divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars and resulted in shameful discrimination.’ They were told not to work or report to their offices while on leave. (…) Elon Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency is helping to spearhead efforts to shrink agency workforces, visited OPM’s headquarters on Friday. Amanda Scales, a former employee of Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI, is OPM’s new chief of staff and has been listed as the point of contact for both the DEIA layoff and probationary period list memos.”
22) National/California: Following a court order, the federal government will probably be cramming immigrant detainees into the GEO Group’s troubled Adelanto facility. “A federal judge ruled last week that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can resume detaining immigrants at its facility in the high desert, one of the largest in California. U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter Jr.’s decision lifts a COVID-era ban on receiving immigrants at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center. Hatter’s ruling is unrelated to former President Trump’s immigration plans. In 2020, he ordered ICE to release detainees after finding the agency failed to properly address the outbreak. Until a final ‘fairness hearing’ in March to close out the settlement, the facility can increase its detainee cap to 475. The facility’s full bed capacity is 1,490, as listed on facility operator GEO Group’s website. The Adelanto ICE Processing Center has faced scrutiny for its conditions, including allegations of medical neglect and poor mental health care. A 2019 report highlighted concerns about substandard medical and mental health treatment of detainees at the facility. (…) Congresswoman Judy Chu says she was disappointed by Hatter’s decision and doesn’t trust GEO Group to upkeep conditions at Adelanto. ‘As a private company, GEO is primarily looking at its profit margin,’ she said. ‘They’re going to cut corners where they can in terms of food, in terms of sanitation, but especially in terms of medical care.’”
The GEO Group has announced the date for its Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Release and Conference Call. Earnings Release scheduled for Thursday, February 27, 2025 before the market opens; Conference Call scheduled for Thursday, February 27, 2025 at 11:00 AM (Eastern Time). Should be interesting.
23) National/Think Tanks/Useful resource: House Democrats have released a detailed fact sheet providing Background on Unlawful Impoundment in President Trump’s Executive Order. “As our fact sheet lays out, the Government Accountability Office, the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (including in an opinion written by future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William H. Rehnquist), and the Supreme Court of the United States, have all disavowed the notion of some ‘inherent Presidential power to impound,’ as some in the Trump orbit have tried to argue without legal or textual basis. Not only is there no inherent Presidential power in the Constitution to impound, but there have been several bedrock fiscal statutes enacted to protect Congress’s constitutional power of the purse and prevent unlawful executive overreach, including the Antideficiency Act and the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA).”
But will the U.S. Supreme Court gut the constitutional standing of the legislative branch and eliminate separation of powers and the power of the purse? That battle is now shaping up, the Washington Post reports. “In the meantime, legal experts said the flurry of activity raised the odds of a high-stakes constitutional confrontation at the Supreme Court, with the potential to shift the balance of power laid out in Article I of the Constitution in which Congress, not the president, possesses the primary authority to tax, spend and manage the nation’s complex finances. ‘What is at stake is the most important structural foundation of our federal government, which is the separation of powers,’ said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University, adding that the power of the purse ‘is how Congress represents us.’”
24) Ohio: Signal Cleveland reports on how Ohio’s privatization of driver’s ed is failing teens in some poor urban and rural areas. “The result has been a system with limited enrollment slots, high prices and slim profit margins for operators. In turn, many 16- and 17-year- old Ohioans are unable to drive legally. This limits their job opportunities and their ability to participate in extracurricular activities. It also places them at a higher risk for crashes if they get their licenses after they turn 18 without driver’s ed, according to a state-funded 2022 study conducted by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania. Of course, kids do get behind the wheel regardless. Ohio officials said of the 113 fatal crashes in 2023 that involved teenage drivers, the teen driver lacked a license or permit in 23% of those crashes. Ohio officials don’t track exactly how many teens are unable to access driver’s ed. But advocates and people in the industry are aware of the problem.”
25) Ohio: Questions have arisen about the level of transparency and accountability in the Seneca County government, whose adult services program has been privatized.
26) Wisconsin: Museum staff pay the price of their facility’s privatization. “On New Years Day, a multi-year process to transition the Charles Allis Art Museum and the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum from public to private ownership officially began.
It will be a challenge for both institutions to survive on their own and big changes have already occurred. In December, just before Christmas, nearly all employees at the two museums were fired. Part-time event staff, maintenance workers, curatorial staff, marketing; all were given notice that they no longer had a job with Charles Allis Villa Terrace, Inc., (CAVT) which is the non-profit that has operated the two museums since 2012. (…) On Dec. 19, the day of the annual CAVT holiday party, the entire staff was told their positions were being terminated, with some exceptions for staff needed on a temporary basis. One of them, Executive Director Jaymee Harvey Willms, would have her job until Jan. 25, when she returned from maternity leave—that would be her last day. The firings came as a shock, with staff wondering how the museums could possibly be operated without workers or how the CAVT board managed to find itself in this position.”
27) National: Government Executive reports that “President Trump on Friday signed a memo barring agencies from reaching agreement on new union contracts in the final days of a president’s term and seeking to unwind contracts that he claims were designed to hamstring his return-to-office mandate, though it’s unlikely that the document will produce any results. Trump, Elon Musk and congressional Republicans in recent months have railed against then-Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley for signing a contract last November with the American Federation of Government Employees locking in existing telework policies until 2029. And the Education Department similarly entered a new contract with AFGE effective Jan. 17. (…) But in practice, it’s not clear if this document would lead to any union contracts being rescinded. The agreement between SSA and AFGE was signed by O’Malley in November, while the Education Department’s contract states that it is effective Jan. 17. Typically, union contracts are not effective until the agency-head review process is complete and once executed, contracts cannot be superseded except by legislation.
AFGE spokeswoman Brittany Holder confirmed Friday that its contract with the Education Department completed agency head review on Jan. 17.”
The Trump memos have also raised staffing and standard issues. “The Social Security Administration, which is currently at a 50-year staffing low and already had restricted hiring before President Trump instituted a hiring freeze last week, told employees in an email Friday that the vast majority of its workforce cannot take deferred resignation or early retirements. But workers at other chronically understaffed agencies, such as the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and the Federal Aviation Administration’s cadre of air traffic controllers, have not received similar guidance from leadership. At least one region of the Veterans Affairs Department emailed staff on Friday to tell them guidance on the deferred resignation program would be forthcoming “in order to ensure continued healthcare operations.” Even employees who have already indicated they want to accept the offer and have received confirmation from OPM should continue to work until they hear otherwise from a supervisor, Laura Ruzick, the regional director said. ‘It is critical that no operational changes stemming from presidential directives or orders are implemented outside of official VHA Operations guidance,’ Ruzick said. ‘Unless explicitly directed otherwise, we will maintain our current operational posture.’”