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The National Archives and Records Administration told employees it would issue reductions in force to only around 3% of staff, or a cut of nearly 100 employees, with notices being sent out on to some of those impacted on Monday and to the remaining individuals on June 30. NARA said it limited the impact of RIFs by proactively offering voluntary separation incentives and the changes would enable faster public access to the agency’s records, artifacts and holdings.
“Please know that decisions regarding NARA’s future state were made carefully and strategically,” Valorie Findlater, the agency’s chief of management and administration said in a note to staff obtained by Government Executive. “We are committed to supporting our employees through the many changes happening at NARA as we champion a more efficient NARA in the future.”
Findlater noted her agency took the actions in response to a requirement from President Trump that all agencies reshape their organizations. A federal judge has blocked implementation of that order at nearly two-dozen agencies, but NARA is not one of them. That case is now pending before the Supreme Court and many of those agencies are prepared to move swiftly to implement layoffs of their own should the justices rule in the administration’s favor.
According to two NARA employees familiar with the layoffs, the first round of RIFs “wiped out” the Office of Innovation and the division that provides support to field offices and presidential libraries. The 13 libraries currently under NARA management are themselves expected to sustain “deep cuts” in the second round of layoffs, that employee said.
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston was forced to briefly close when NARA fired its probationary employees in February. The RIFs will mark only a portion of the staffing losses the agency ultimately sustains, as many additional workers have already taken buyouts or early retirement offers.
As the probationary staff were let go, employees were already warning that facilities would be short staffed, museum programming would be limited and record retrieval—such as those for veterans—would likely see backlogs. Trump fired Colleen Shogan, the most recent U.S. Archivist, earlier this year. He named State Department Secretary Marco Rubio as acting archivist, though James Byron, president of the Richard Nixon Foundation, is currently managing the agency on a day-to-day basis.
Rubio attempted to implement RIFs at State over the weekend but was blocked in federal court at the 11th hour.
]]>Specifically, the Office of Inspector General estimated that justification forms were missing for 18,000 employees, 10,900 individuals received bonuses for improper reasons and 4,100 people got incentive payments despite missing one or more of the required signatures from appropriate agency officials.
“VA did not effectively govern the incentive process to ensure responsible VHA officials consistently captured mandatory information necessary to support an incentive award,” investigators wrote. “The required documentation helps provide assurance that incentives are properly used, and effective oversight of incentives also requires sufficient documentation for review.”
The OIG also found that 71% of employees who received relocation incentives, or 2,200 individuals, did not self-certify that they moved. Investigators highlighted one worker who received $30,000 to relocate, but the employee didn’t appear to verify their new address and human resources said the individual didn’t have to move because it was a remote position.
While VA sought to recoup the money, the employee requested a waiver, and it was determined that the payment was the result of an administrative processing error. As a result, the individual was able to keep about $22,000.
Additionally, investigators identified 28 employees who were still receiving retention bonuses, in some cases for years, after they were supposed to have ended, leading to $4.6 million in improper payments. For example, one employee received a 12% retention incentive in September 2013 that was supposed to end in February 2014. Instead, payments continued for the next decade, totaling about $150,900.
The VA reported that it is pursuing debt collection for 27 of the 28 employees.
Department officials blamed the errors on an overhaul in fiscal years 2019 and 2020 that transferred HR responsibilities from the facility level to the Veterans Integrated Services Networks (i.e. regional level), which led to a shortage of trained staff to oversee incentive payments. The IG, however, noted that the office flagged similar issues with oversight of recruitment, relocation and retention bonuses in a 2017 audit.
“In response to [that audit], [the department] updated VA policy to establish internal controls and improve oversight of incentives,” according to the report. “However, the OIG team found VHA did not take sufficient steps to sustain or enforce the updated VA policies to ensure incentive packages were completed appropriately before payments were initiated. Further, VISN human resources staff acknowledged they did not always adhere to policy.”
VA concurred with all eight recommendations, which include enforcing quality control checks to ensure that VISNs fulfill requirements for maintaining monetary incentive documentation and identifying retention awards that have been paid for more than one year to determine whether they have been appropriately recertified or should be terminated.
In 2024, VA acknowledged that it mistakenly awarded $11 million in “critical skill” bonuses to senior executives.
Under President Donald Trump, VA is seeking to downsize its workforce by around 80,000 employees, which would represent a 15% cut that brings it down to fiscal 2019 levels.
]]>Senators split along party lines, 53-44, to confirm Long, who served in the U.S. House from 2011 to 2023, and previously spent multiple years as a talk radio host.
Long heads to the IRS after the agency has lost more than 11,000 employees, or 11% of its workforce, either through deferred resignations or mass firing of probationary workers since President Donald Trump began his second term, according to a May 2 report from the agency’s inspector general.
In a social media post after Long’s confirmation, Republican Sen. Mike Crapo, chair of the Senate Committee on Finance, congratulated the new IRS commissioner.
“I look forward to partnering with him in his efforts to modernize the IRS and improve customer service for taxpayers,” wrote Crapo, of Idaho.
Long’s nomination process was overshadowed by a Democrat-led investigation into the former lawmaker’s involvement in a fake tribal tax credit scheme.
Long denied any wrongdoing during his May 20 confirmation hearing.
Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Finance Committee, said on the floor ahead of Thursday’s vote that a decision on Long “ought to be an easy no.”
“It’s one corruption bombshell after another with former Congressman Billy Long. Fake tax credits. Scam tax advice. Shadowy political donations that went straight in his pocket. Promises of personal favors. No-show jobs with high-paying federal salaries. That’s quite a rap-sheet,” said Wyden, of Oregon.
The IRS is tasked with collecting tax revenue and enforcing the tax code.
]]>For more than a year, a little-known government agency has been investigating the incident. But the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board will likely shut down before completing its probes of the Dow explosion and other such incidents across the country. President Donald Trump’s administration has quietly proposed shutting down the board, an independent federal agency charged with uncovering the causes of large-scale chemical accidents.
Near the end of a 1,224-page budget document released with little fanfare on May 30, White House officials said shutting down the agency, commonly called the CSB, will help “move the nation toward fiscal responsibility” as the Trump administration works to “redefine the proper role of the federal government.” The CSB’s $14 million annual budget would be zeroed out for the 2026 fiscal year and its emergency fund of $844,000 would be earmarked for closure-related costs. The process of shutting the agency down is set to begin this year, according to CSB documents.
Eliminating the CSB will come at a cost to the safety of plant workers and neighboring communities, especially along the Gulf Coast, where the bulk of the U.S. petrochemical industry is concentrated, said former CSB officials and environmental groups.
“Closing the CSB will mean more accidents at chemical plants, more explosions and more deaths,” said Beth Rosenberg, a public health expert who served on the CSB board from 2013 to 2014.
“This shows that the Trump administration does not care about frontline communities already burdened with this industry,” said Roishetta Ozane, founder of the Vessel Project, an environmental justice group in Lake Charles. “We’re the ones who have to shelter in place or evacuate whenever there’s an explosion or (chemical) release, and now there will be less oversight when these things happen.”
The CSB did not respond to a request for comment.
The proposed closure of the CSB follows several other moves by the Trump administration to slash staffing levels at the Environmental Protection Agency and ease federal health and safety regulations.
Founded in 1998, the CSB investigates the causes of petrochemical accidents and issues recommendations to plants, regulators and business groups. The CSB doesn’t impose fines or penalties, instead relying on voluntary compliance or on enforcement by other agencies, such as the EPA, to mandate safety improvements.
Of the more than 100 investigations the CSB has conducted, Texas leads the country with 22 cases, followed by Louisiana with eight.
“Those numbers tell us that Louisiana and Texas really need the Chemical Safety Board, and there will certainly be negative impacts here if it closes down,” said Wilma Subra, an environmental scientist with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network.
Along with the Dow chemical explosion, the agency has four other active investigations of incidents in Texas, Kentucky, Georgia and Virginia. CSB investigations often take several months to complete.
In an update of the Dow explosion investigation last year, the CSB hinted at “several events of concern” at the chemical complex between Baton Rouge and the town of Plaquemine — an area that forms part of the industrial corridor known as “Cancer Alley.” Among the targets of the investigation were at least two mechanical problems, multiple smaller explosions after the initial blow-up, and the release of more than 30,000 pounds of ethylene oxide, a colorless gas the agency noted is a cancer-causing substance.
The CSB’s last completed investigation was a fatal 2024 explosion at a steel hardening facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The CSB identified several safety failures and at least three other dangerous incidents involving similar hazards at other facilities owned by the same company, HEF Groupe of France.
HEF “failed to ensure that information about those incidents and lessons learned from them were shared and implemented organization-wide,” the CSB investigation, released early this month, found.
A chain reaction of mishaps at the Chattanooga facility resulted in an eruption of “hot molten salt” that killed a worker, according to the investigation.
On average, hazardous chemical accidents happen once every other day in the U.S., according to Coming Clean, an environmental health nonprofit. Coming Clean documented 825 fires, leaks and other chemical-related incidents between January 2021 and October 2023. The incidents killed at least 43 people and triggered evacuation orders and advisories in nearly 200 communities.
Under the first Trump administration, investigations were hampered by staffing shortages and months-long conflicts between the board and the agency’s Trump-appointed director, according to a federal inspector’s report.
In the new budget proposal, the Trump administration indicated the CSB’s duties could be handled by other agencies.
“The CSB duplicates substantial capabilities in the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to investigate chemical-related mishaps,” a CSB budget proposal said. “This function should reside within agencies that have authorities to issue regulations…”
This justification is “a lie,” said Jordan Barab, a former deputy assistant secretary of OSHA and a former CSB recommendations manager.
While OSHA and the EPA are limited to assessing specific violations of their existing standards and regulations, the CSB can look far more broadly and at the “deeper causes” of accidents, including worker fatigue, corporate budget cuts and lax oversight, Barab said.
Even when other federal agencies appeared to ignore CSB recommendations, community groups and local governments could cite them when pushing for improved safety standards, Ozane said.
“It was scientific evidence we could all use to pressure the state or the federal regulators to do something about pollution and safety in the places we live,” she said. “This is just another tool and another resource that’s been taken away from us.”
This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/trump-quietly-shutters-the-only-federal-agency-that-investigates-industrial-chemical-explosions/.
Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org
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