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NASA reportedly set to lose 2,000 senior staff members as Trump looks to slash agency's budget

NASA reportedly set to lose 2,000 senior staff members as Trump looks to slash agency's budget

Independent2 days ago
NASA will soon be facing a major brain drain as more than 2,000 senior employees prepare to leave the agency amid a push to reduce its workforce.
Some 875 NASA workers are at the highest level of government ranks and in managerial or specialized positions, POLITICO reported Wednesday, citing related documents the website had obtained. Furthermore, more than 1,800 serve in mission areas, such as science and human spaceflight, and the employees make up the majority of 2,694 civil staff who have agreed to leave NASA, POLITICO said.
NASA will not be releasing the number of individuals who take the Deferred Resignation Program before the offering window's closure on July 25.
The agency told The Independent that it remains committed to its mission, working "within a more prioritized budget."
The brain drain comes as the White House's budget slashes the agency's Fiscal Year 2026 funding to about half of its previous $7.33 billion allocation. The cuts come as President Donald Trump has led a push to reduce the federal budget and shrink the government's workforce.
'There is no set target number for the [resignation program]. This program is a voluntary opportunity available to NASA employees,' spokesperson Bethany Stevens said.
'We are working closely with the administration to ensure that America continues to lead the way in space exploration, advancing progress on key goals, including the moon and Mars,' she added.
The report's findings come after leaders at NASA facilities told employees they already expected impacts and the Fiscal Year 2026 budget. A reduction in force at NASA, led by the Department of Government Efficiency, was initially delayed in February before the first layoffs in March, closing the Office of the Chief Scientists and Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy.
'Indiscriminately firing the next generation of NASA scientists, engineers and wider team members is exactly the wrong step to secure America's leadership in space — just as competition with China is reaching fever pitch,' George Whitesides, NASA's former Chief of Staff, said in a post on X reacting to layoffs in February. 'These employee terminations, like the layoffs of nuclear workers at the National Nuclear Security Administration, bird flu workers at USDA, wildfire GIS workers at the Forest Service, and weather forecasters at NOAA, will only make America weaker.'
If NASA's budget passes through Congress, the agency is expected to see blows to crucial initiatives that have been the product of decades of its research.
Those would include 41 space missions, the agency's climate monitoring satellites and top climate lab, the ongoing Mars Sample Return mission and upcoming missions to Venus.
In response to the budget, which would eliminate 47 percent of its science budget, all living former NASA science chiefs penned a letter condemning the cuts, calling on Congress to preserve U.S. leadership in space exploration and to reject the cuts.
'Continuing this support of space science is critical both in terms of leveraging existing activities while also planning and implementing future investments in the next generation of U.S. scientists and engineers who will lead the world in space science,' they wrote. 'To do otherwise would be to cede U.S. leadership in space and science to China and other nations, to severely damage a peerless and immensely capable engineering and scientific workforce, and to needlessly put to waste billions of dollars of taxpayer investments.'
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Federal judge issues stunning rebuke to Trump by blocking 'unlawful' ICE detentions in southern California amid wide scale crackdown
Federal judge issues stunning rebuke to Trump by blocking 'unlawful' ICE detentions in southern California amid wide scale crackdown

Daily Mail​

time38 minutes ago

  • Daily Mail​

Federal judge issues stunning rebuke to Trump by blocking 'unlawful' ICE detentions in southern California amid wide scale crackdown

A federal judge delivered a stunning rebuke to the Trump administration on Friday, halting what she described as racially-driven, unconstitutional immigration raids that have upended lives, shuttered businesses, and thrown entire communities into chaos across Southern California. The blistering ruling stunned government attorneys and sent shockwaves through the Department of Homeland Security. US District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong granted a temporary restraining order barring federal agents from using race, language, or vocation as justification for immigration stops. She also ordered immediate access to legal counsel for detainees held at the notorious downtown Los Angeles facility known as 'B-18.' The ruling marks a major legal victory for immigrant rights groups and a sharp blow to the Trump administration's hardline immigration tactics in liberal California - tactics critics have called draconian, dangerous, and politically motivated. Mayor Karen Bass praised the decision in a scathing statement Friday afternoon, saying Angelenos were living in fear as 'masked men grab people off the street, chase working people through parking lots and march through children's summer camps.' The court order stops ICE and CBP agents from detaining individuals based on race, Spanish-language use, or presence at sites like car washes, tow yards, bus stops, and Home Depot parking lots - all locations where hundreds of people were swept up in recent weeks. The lawsuit, Vasquez Perdomo et al. v. Noem et al., was filed last week on behalf of several advocacy organizations, three undocumented immigrants, and two US citizens, one of whom, Latino tow truck worker Brian Gavidia, was allegedly detained despite showing valid identification. The case was sparked by a wave of arrests across seven California counties including Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and Pasadena, that immigrant rights groups described as indiscriminate and terrorizing. Since June 6, more than 2,800 people have been detained in a massive escalation of ICE operations. A Los Angeles Times analysis found that nearly 70 percent of those arrested had no criminal record, and more than half had never been charged with a crime. Inside B-18, detainees were allegedly held in squalid conditions, denied food and water, and stripped of their constitutional right to an attorney. Judge Frimpong not only ordered 24-hour legal access and confidential phone lines for those in custody, she blasted the administration's apparent lack of evidence to justify the raids. California Governor Gavin Newsom weighed in, delivering one of the strongest rebukes yet of the Trump administration's tactics. 'Justice prevailed today - the court's decision puts a temporary stop to federal immigration officials violating people's rights and racial profiling,' Newsom said in a statement. 'Stephen Miller's immigration agenda is one of chaos, cruelty and fear. Instead of targeting the most dangerous people, federal officials have been arbitrarily detaining Americans and hardworking people, ripping families apart, and disappearing people into cruel detention to meet outrageous arrest quotas without regard to due process and constitutional rights that protect all of us from cruelty and injustice. 'That should stop now. California stands with the law, and the foundation upon which our founding fathers built this country. I call on the Trump administration to do the same.' California Attorney General Rob Bonta called the ruling a 'critical victory' and condemned what he called the Trump administration's campaign of 'fear and division.' Bonta led a multi-state coalition backing the plaintiffs and previously sued the Trump administration over an executive order to federalize California's National Guard. In court, he argued that the raids were not about immigration enforcement but about punishing Los Angeles for its political opposition to Trump - citing the president's own social media post vowing to conduct 'the single largest Mass Deportation Program in history.' Government lawyers struggled to defend the crackdown, saying agents acted lawfully and had only a few days to respond to the allegations. DOJ attorney Sean Skedzielewski insisted that ICE agents were trained on the 4th Amendment and acted 'aboveboard', but Judge Frimpong was openly skeptical, repeatedly pressing him on the lack of specific documentation. Declarations from DHS officials Kyle Harvick and Andre Quinones were dismissed as 'very general' and 'failing to engage with the high volume of evidence' presented by the plaintiffs. Plaintiffs argued the raids had less to do with public safety and more to do with politics - a point echoed by several city governments that joined the lawsuit this week. The cities of Los Angeles, West Hollywood, Montebello, and five others argued in their filing that the crackdown is a retaliation campaign, designed to make an example of Democratic strongholds. A curbside vender sells food to day laborers waiting near a Home Depot home improvement store in hope of finding work in Los Angeles Tajsar pointed to Gavidia's case as emblematic of the abuses. He was detained 'for no other reason than the fact that he's Latino and working at a tow yard in a Latino neighborhood,' he said. The Trump administration is expected to appeal the ruling, but for now the restraining order remains in effect in what is a rare, stinging legal defeat for an administration that has largely succeeded in hardening the nation's immigration enforcement policies. Community leaders are celebrating the decision but warning that the fight isn't over. The temporary order could eventually become permanent if the plaintiffs prevail at trial - a possibility Judge Frimpong suggested is highly likely.

David Gergen, adviser to Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton, dies at 83
David Gergen, adviser to Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton, dies at 83

The Independent

timean hour ago

  • The Independent

David Gergen, adviser to Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton, dies at 83

Presidential adviser and political commentator David Gergen has died at the age of 83. Gergen served alongside four presidents: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. He then spent some time as a magazine editor before going from political insider to TV commentator. Gergen died at a retirement community in Lexington, Massachusetts, on Thursday from Lewy body dementia, his son Christopher said, according to The New York Times. Gergen wrote speeches, briefed reporters, and created communication strategies. He also helped set the agenda for the four presidents he served, with Clinton being the only Democrat among them. He began his political career in the Nixon White House and served as communications director on two occasions, first to Gerald Ford and then to Ronald Reagan. The adviser was given credit for easing the harsh rightwing rhetoric that Reagan's more hardline staffers wanted to use. Clinton brought him back into the White House after a number of political mistakes had set his administration on the wrong course. He lasted roughly a year in the Clinton administration, where some viewed him as an intruder and in a time when many Republicans saw him as a deserter. Following his departure from government, he was lauded by the presidents he had served, and he remained mostly unmarred by the issues that had befallen them. He told The Washington Post in 1981 that he had been slow to understand Nixon's guilt in the Watergate scandal. 'I was young, and I was too naïve. It hardened me up a lot.' Decades later, in a 2021 column for CNN, he wrote President Donald Trump was 'a bully — mean, nasty and disrespectful of anyone in his way.' Speaking to The Boston Globe in 2020, he said, 'Centrism doesn't mean splitting the difference.' 'It's about seeking solutions, and you bring people along. I'm happily in that role,' he added at the time. A tall man, 6-feet-5, Gergen became popular with many reporters at the White House, leaking information often enough to be dubbed 'the sieve,' The Times noted. But some journalists weren't so charmed. Mike Kelly, who died in 2003 during the Iraq War, was one of them. 'To be Gergenized is to be spun by the velveteen hum of this soothing man's soothing voice into a state of such vertigo that the sense of what is real disappears into a blur,' he wrote in The New York Times Magazine in 1993. Gergen told Kelly that he had often been 'selling for the sake of selling.' Spinning 'had nothing to do with ideas,' said Gergen. 'It had nothing to do with anything that was real,' he added. 'Eventually, it became selling the sizzle without the steak. There was nothing connected to it. It was all cellophane. It was all packaging.' Between his tours in the White House, Gergen dabbled in journalism, becoming the managing editor of Public Opinion magazine in 1978. The magazine was published by the conservative American Enterprise Institute. He also served as the editor and columnist at U.S. News & World Report in the mid-1980s. He frequently appeared on television and taught at Duke University and Harvard's Kennedy School. Born on May 9, 1942 in Durham, North Carolina, his father was the chair of the mathematics department at Duke. Graduating from Yale with a degree in American studies in 1963, Gergen was an intern in the office of North Carolina's Democratic Governor, Terry Sanford, for three summers. After earning a law degree from Harvard, he joined the Navy in 1967, serving as an officer on a ship in Japan. He married a Brit, Anne Wilson, whom he met on a blind date that same year.

We're becoming inured to Trump's outbursts – but when he goes quiet, we need to be worried
We're becoming inured to Trump's outbursts – but when he goes quiet, we need to be worried

The Guardian

time2 hours ago

  • The Guardian

We're becoming inured to Trump's outbursts – but when he goes quiet, we need to be worried

In the global attention economy, one titan looms over all others. Donald Trump can command the gaze of the world at a click of those famously short fingers. When he stages a spectacular made-for-TV moment – say, that Oval Office showdown with Volodymyr Zelenskyy – the entire planet sits up and takes notice. But that dominance has a curious side-effect. When Trump does something awful and eye-catching, nations tremble and markets move. But when he does something awful but unflashy, it scarcely registers. So long as there's no jaw-dropping video, no expletive-ridden soundbite, no gimmick or stunt, it can slip by as if it hadn't happened. Especially now that our senses are dulled through over-stimulation. These days it requires ever more shocking behaviour by the US president to prompt a reaction; we are becoming inured to him. Yet the danger he poses is as sharp as ever. Consider the events of just the last week or so, few of them stark enough to lead global news bulletins, yet each one another step towards the erosion of democracy in and by the world's most powerful country. On Wednesday, Trump threatened to impose 50% tariffs – yes, he's climbed back on that dead horse – on Brazil, if the judicial authorities there do not drop the prosecution of the country's Trump-like former president Jair Bolsonaro, charged with seeking to overturn his 2022 election defeat and leading a coup against the man who beat him, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. As concisely as he could manage, Lula explained, via social media, that Brazil is a sovereign country and that an independent judiciary cannot 'accept interference or instruction from anyone … No one is above the law.' This is becoming a habit of Trump's. He made the same move in defence of Benjamin Netanyahu last month, hinting that Israel could lose billions in US military aid if the prime minister continues to stand trial on corruption charges. In both cases, Trump was explicit in making the connection between the accused men and himself, decrying as a 'witch-hunt' the efforts to hold them to account. 'This is nothing more, or less, than an attack on a Political Opponent,' he posted, of Bolsonaro's legal woes. 'Something I know much about!' It's easy to make light of the transparent effort by Trump to forge an international trade union of populist would-be autocrats, but he's not solely moved by fraternal solidarity. He also wants to dismantle a norm that has long applied across the democratic world, which insists that even those at the top are subject to the law. That norm is an impediment to him, a check on his power. If he can discredit it, so that a new convention arises – one that agrees that leaders can act with impunity – that helps his animating project in the US: the amassing of ever more power to himself and the weakening or elimination of any rival source of authority that might act as a restraint. He is being quietly assisted in that goal by those US institutions that should regard themselves as co-equal branches of government – Congress and the supreme court – and whose constitutional duty is to stand up to an overmighty executive. Republicans in Congress have now approved a mega bill that they know will leave future generations of Americans drowning in debt and deprive millions of basic healthcare cover. Even so, they put aside their own judgment and bowed to the man who would be king. Less discussed was the bill's extraordinary expansion of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or Ice. Its budget has been increased by a reported 308%, with an extra $45bn to spend on detention and $29.9bn for 'enforcement and deportation'. It will soon have the capacity to detain nearly 120,000 people at any one time. And, remember, latest figures show that about half of all those detained by Ice have no criminal record at all. No wonder even conservative critics are sounding the alarm. The anti-Trump Republicans of the Bulwark warn that within months, the 'national brute squad' that is Ice will have twice as many agents as the FBI and its own vast prison system, emerging as 'the primary instrument of internal state power'. In this view, Trump has realised that corrupting the FBI is a tall order – though still worth trying – so he is supplanting it with a shadow force shaped in his own image. As the Bulwark puts it: 'The American police state is here.' Those most directly threatened might share clips of masked Ice agents snatching suspected migrants off the streets and manhandling them violently, just as reports circulate of appalling conditions in Ice premises, with people held in 'dungeon-like facilities', more than 100 crammed into a small room, denied showers or a chance to change clothes, and sometimes given only one meal a day and forced to sleep on concrete benches or the floor. But it is hardly a matter of national focus. Because it is not accompanied by a neon-lit Trump performance, it is happening just out of view. The same could be said of a series of recent decisions by the supreme court. They may lack the instant, blockbuster impact of past rulings, but they accelerate the same Trump trend away from democracy and towards autocracy. On Tuesday, the judges gave Trump the green light to fire federal workers en masse and to dismantle entire government agencies without the approval of Congress. Earlier, the supreme court had ruled that Trump was allowed to remove Democrats from the leadership of government bodies that are meant to be under politically balanced supervision. More usefully still for Trump, last month the judges limited the power of the lower courts to block the executive branch, thereby lending a helping hand to one of the president's most egregious executive orders: his ending of the principle that anyone born in the US is automatically a citizen of the US, a right so fundamental it is enshrined in the constitution. In ruling after ruling, the supreme court is removing restraints on Trump and handing him even more power. Small wonder that when one of the dissenting minority on the court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, was asked on Thursday what kept her up at night, she answered: 'The state of our democracy.' Meanwhile, Trump is succeeding in his goal of cowing the press, extracting serious cash from major news organisations in return for dropping (usually flimsy) lawsuits against them, a move that is having the desired, chilling effect. It all adds up to the steady erosion of US democracy and of democratic norms whose reach once extended far beyond US shores. Even if it is happening quietly, by Trump's standards, without the familiar sound and fury, it is still happening. The work of opposing it begins with noticing it. Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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