““We weren’t just hired — a lot of us were working with NOAA for a very long period,” he said. He also noted that his termination email cited that he was fired “because of his ability, knowledge and/or skills do not fit the agency’s current needs” — though he said he had received glowing performance reviews.
Several other people who identified themselves as NOAA or weather service employees wrote on social media that they, or family members, had received an email Thursday notifying them that they had been terminated. It appeared that many were considered probationary employees, meaning they were recently hired or promoted.”
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“”The fact of the matter is that the private sector, as it presently exists, simply cannot quickly spin up to fill any void left by substantial dismantling of NOAA and/or the NWS,” Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist, said in a statement on social media. “The now-confirmed and rumored additional cuts to come at NOAA/NWS are spectacularly short-sighted, and ultimately will deal a major self-inflicted wound to the public safety of Americans and the resiliency of the American economy to weather and climate-related disasters.””
People are forgetting the basic principles of our constitution; This forgetting facilitates Trump and Musk stealing power that constitutionally belongs to the Congress.
“Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday night granted a respite to the Trump administration as it seeks to keep billions of dollars in foreign aid frozen, despite a judge’s order directing the administration to resume payments immediately.
Roberts’ intervention heads off the possibility of administration officials being held in contempt for failing to comply with the order from U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, who imposed a deadline of 11:59 p.m. Wednesday for the federal government to pay nearly $2 billion in unpaid invoices from foreign-aid contractors.”
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“Ali, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, ordered the administration on Tuesday to pay the accumulated bills by the end of the day on Wednesday. The judge acted after finding that the Trump administration had essentially flouted earlier orders he issued requiring the State Department to lift a blanket freeze on overseas aid programs.
Rather than take steps to unfreeze that aid, as Ali had directed Feb. 13, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development found new legal rationales to keep it on hold, the judge said.
As a result, Ali gave the administration the midnight Wednesday deadline to send the payments for what officials have estimated is $2 billion-worth of unpaid work completed by aid contractors.”
LC: Basically, the Trump administration flouted the courts, the law, and the separation of powers, and Roberts bailed them out rather than forcing the issue. Under Trump, the U.S. constitutional system is deeply degrading.
“Trump might end up getting less than he bargained for. Estimates of Ukraine’s supposed mineral wealth are based on outdated Soviet-era surveys that didn’t take into account the viability or cost of developing them.
The latest draft of the agreement, cited by Ukrainian newspaper Economic Pravda, would see Kyiv pay 50 percent of revenues from its state-owned natural resources into a fund that would invest in Ukraine. There would be no U.S. security guarantees in return.”
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“Though the country reports more than 20,000 surveyed mineral deposits and sites, only around 8,000 of them have been assessed as viable. Of these, fewer than half were being exploited before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago.”
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“China — which processes nearly 90 percent of rare earths worldwide — holds a “near monopoly” over this step in the supply chain, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Most major rare earth producers, including the U.S., lack the domestic know-how or infrastructure needed to refine the minerals, forcing them to rely on Beijing.
Developing infrastructure to do so in Ukraine would, even with U.S. investment, take years and would likely be less efficient than shipping the minerals to China for processing.”
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“Add to this investment the billions of dollars required to clear land of mines and explosives — which could take over a decade — and to rebuild essential infrastructure to sustain the mining sector, from roads to power plants.”
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“Several promising prospects are located in territories under Russian occupation.”
“at the Food and Drug Administration, the Trump administration is backpedaling on some of its terminations, reinstating workers in the agency’s medical devices division after realizing they were responsible for approving and monitoring the safety of life-saving equipment like pacemakers and defibrillators.”
“President Donald Trump pledged Thursday to enforce his planned 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico starting March 4, after both were put on pause earlier this month.
“We cannot allow this scourge [of drugs] to continue to harm the USA, and therefore, until it stops, or is seriously limited, the proposed TARIFFS scheduled to go into effect on MARCH FOURTH will, indeed, go into effect, as scheduled,” Trump posted to Truth Social on Thursday morning.
Trump also promised to levy an additional 10 percent tariff on China starting the same date.”
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“Trump has already imposed 10 percent tariffs on China after the leaders were unable to stave off a deadline earlier this month”
“Building lethality in the military may be the buzzword for the new Trump administration, but busywork and paperwork have become the reality at the Pentagon, as service members and civilian workers are facing a broad mandate to purge all of the department’s social media sites and untangle confusing personnel reduction moves.
On Wednesday, the department’s top public affairs official signed and sent out a new memo requiring all the military services to spend countless hours poring over years of website postings, photos, news articles and videos to remove any mentions that “promote diversity, equity and inclusion.””
“The Trump administration touted a nearly $1 billion plan Wednesday to combat the spread of avian flu and mitigate skyrocketing egg prices as the outbreak rips through poultry flocks across the United States.
But the measures come as the Agriculture Department is struggling to rehire key employees working on the virus outbreak who were fired as part of the administration’s sweeping purge of government workers. Roughly a quarter of employees in a critical office testing for the disease were cut, as well as scientists and inspectors.”
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“A few reinstated workers were once again sent emails urging them to take the Trump administration’s “deferred resignation” plan, according to two people familiar with the situation.”
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““If … they have projects that are ongoing, all of that work has now essentially been thrown out, discarded and dead in the water,” said Dr. Mary Beth Hall, a retired Dairy Forage researcher. “You’ve got God knows how many millions of dollars of research that’s just been thrown away.””