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Year: 2025

Trump administration rehires laid-off employees after cost-cutting blitz

Trump administration rehires laid-off employees after cost-cutting blitz

Hundreds of federal employees in the United States who lost their jobs in Elon Musk’s cost-cutting blitz are being asked to return to work. The General Services Administration (GSA) has given the employees, who managed government workspaces, until the end of the week to accept or decline reinstatement, according to an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press news agency. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list Those who accept must report for duty on October 6 after what amounts to a seven-month paid vacation, during which time the GSA in some cases racked up high costs – passed along to taxpayers – to stay in dozens of properties whose leases it had slated for termination or were allowed to expire. “Ultimately, the outcome was the agency was left broken and understaffed,” said Chad Becker, a former GSA real estate official. “They didn’t have the people they needed to carry out basic functions.” Becker, who represents owners with government leases at Arco Real Estate Solutions, said the GSA has been in a “triage mode” for months. He said the sudden reversal of the downsizing reflects how the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under Musk’s prior leadership had gone too far, too fast. The GSA was established in the 1940s to centralise the acquisition and management of thousands of federal workplaces. Its return-to-work request mirrors rehiring efforts at several agencies targeted by DOGE. Last month, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said it would allow some employees who took a resignation offer to remain on the job. Advertisement The Labor Department has also brought back some employees who took buyouts, while the National Park Service earlier reinstated a number of purged employees. Critical to the work of such agencies is the GSA, which manages many of the buildings. Starting in March, thousands of GSA employees left the agency as part of programmes that encouraged them to resign or take early retirement. Hundreds of others – those subject to the recall notice – were dismissed as part of an aggressive push to reduce the size of the federal workforce. Though those employees did not show up for work, some continue to get paid. GSA representatives did not respond to detailed questions about the return-to-work notice, which the agency issued on Friday. They also declined to discuss the agency’s headcount, staffing decisions or the potential cost overruns generated by reversing its plans to terminate leases. “GSA’s leadership team has reviewed workforce actions and is making adjustments in the best interest of the customer agencies we serve and the American taxpayers,” an agency spokesman said in an email. Democrats have assailed the indiscriminate approach to slashing costs and jobs by the administration of President Donald Trump. Representative Greg Stanton of Arizona, the top Democrat on the subcommittee overseeing the GSA, told the AP that there is no evidence that reductions at the agency “delivered any savings”. “It’s created costly confusion while undermining the very services taxpayers depend on,” he said. DOGE identified the agency, which had about 12,000 employees at the start of the Trump administration, as a chief target of its campaign to reduce fraud, waste and abuse in the federal government. A small cohort of Musk’s trusted aides embedded in the GSA’s headquarters, sometimes sleeping on cots on the agency’s sixth floor, and pursued plans to abruptly cancel nearly half of the 7,500 leases in the federal portfolio. DOGE also wanted the GSA to sell hundreds of federally-owned buildings with the goal of generating billions in savings. The GSA started by sending more than 800 lease cancellation notices to landlords, in many cases without informing the government tenants. The agency also published a list of hundreds of government buildings that were targeted for sale. The Government Accountability Office, an independent congressional watchdog, is examining the GSA’s management of its workforce, lease terminations and planned building disposals, and expects to issue findings in the coming months, said David Marroni, a senior GAO official. Advertisement Adblock test (Why?)

Democrat succeeds her late father in Congress as GOP House majority shrinks

Democrat succeeds her late father in Congress as GOP House majority shrinks

Democrat Adelita Grijalva has won a special election in battleground Arizona, securing the congressional seat left vacant by her father’s death and further eroding Republicans’ razor-thin House majority. The Associated Press reports that Grijalva, a former Pima County supervisor, defeated business owner and contractor Daniel Butierez, the Republican nominee, in Tuesday’s election in southern Arizona’s 7th Congressional District. Grijalva will serve the remaining 15 months of the term of Raul Grijalva, who died in March following complications from cancer treatment. TRUMP NOT ON BALLOT BUT FRONT-AND-CENTER IN 2025 ELECTIONS The younger Grijalva’s victory was anything but a surprise in the left-leaning district. Democrats enjoy a nearly two-to-one voter registration advantage over Republicans in the Hispanic-majority district, which stretches from Yuma to Tucson and includes almost the entire length of the state’s border with Mexico. HEAD HERE FOR FOX NEWS’ 2025 ELECTION COVERAGE Republicans currently control the House 219-214, with two vacant seats remaining.  Besides Arizona’s 7th Congressional District, there’s also a vacancy in Texas 18th Congressional District, a heavily Democrat-dominated district in Houston, following the March death of Democratic Rep. Sylvester Turner. The special election to fill the seat will be held on November 4, which is Election Day 2025. Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District, a right-leaning seat where Republican Rep. Mark Green stepped down in July to take a job in the private sector, is also currently vacant. The special election to fill the seat will be held on December 2. Grijalva, thanks in part to her family name and her support from national progressive rock stars, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, grabbed over 60% of the primary vote this summer in a five-candidate showdown. Progressive activist and social media influencer Deja Foxx came in a distant second. Grijalva, who with her victory became Arizona’s first Latina in Congress, targeted President Donald Trump as she campaigned, “In Congress, I commit to fight Trump’s cruel agenda, like the Big Ugly Bill that took away coverage from nearly 383,000 Arizonans and 142,000 children,” Grijalva pledged in a social media post, as she took aim at Trump, congressional Republicans, and their sweeping domestic policy measure that they named the One Big Beautiful Bill. Grijalva had also said that if she won, she would immediately sign a discharge petition by Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky. The petition, which is currently just one vote shy of passing, calls on the GOP-controlled House to vote to urge the Justice Department to release the files on the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Butierez, as he campaigned, had been promoting himself as the change candidate in a district controlled by Democrats since the seat was created over two decades ago. “This is your chance to actually get a Representative who will represent everyone. If you vote we win, if you don’t only the radicals will have representation,” he wrote on X. Butierez, who as the 2024 GOP congressional nominee lost to the elder Grijalva while Trump narrowly carried the southwestern battleground state at the top of the ballot, easily won this summer’s Republican primary in the special election. While Trump carried Arizona last year after losing it in 2020, 2024 Democratic presidential nominee and then-Vice President Kamala Harris won the district by 23 points.  Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin, in a statement after the race was called, said that “Rep.-elect Grijalva won a hard-fought race. Now, Arizonans will have a fighter in their corner who will stand up to Trump on behalf of families who want to see real leadership in Washington.”