Julian Sanchez: Hey, this is Julian Sanchez with your WatchCats News Roundup for April 1, 2025.
Doge staffers Stephanie Holmes and Katrine Trampe have received access to the federal government's payroll system housed at the Department of the Interior over the objection of internal IT staff.
In a memo last week, those staff had warned that” elevated access to critical high-value systems is rare with respect to individual systems, and no single DOI official presently has access to all HR, payroll, and credentialing systems.” They also warned that “without formal qualifications, the department may experience significant failure because of operator error.”
The move to access the federal payroll system is supposed to be an effort to, again, track fraud and waste. But as folks with a background in cybersecurity will know, ah unifying and increasing access to such systems also ah increases security risks because it means ah the results of a breach become more catastrophic.
We've also seen the effort to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development underway again after the Fourth Circuit of Court of Appeals on Friday lifted a lower court's order that had blocked the dismantling of the agency as likely unconstitutional.
Within minutes of that announcement, DOGE lawyer Jeremy Lewin, who had been installed as USAID's deputy administrator, sent out emails notifying staff that nearly all their jobs would be eliminated by September.
Incidentally, Rolling Stone published a piece Tuesday morning reporting that Lewin, according to 10 people who know him, has a long history of violent outbursts and racist rants.
There's also major cuts underway at the Department of Health and Human Services, which encompasses the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration.
Senior leadership at at those agencies ah had been placed on administrative leave or offered reassignment to offices in places like Alaska and Billings, Montana.
Many lower-level staff discovered they'd been laid off only when they showed up to work on Tuesday morning and discovered that their security badges no longer work. This is part of a plan under which a total of 20,000 jobs within that department are slated to be eliminated.
Also on the chopping block, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, whose entire staff have been placed on leave following a “brief meeting between DOGE staff and IMLS leadership.” That institute is responsible for awarding grants to local libraries and other cultural institutions.
And the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has already seen 1,000 employees fired or resigning, with another 1,000 slated to be cut in the near future.
NOAA is, among other things, home to the National Weather Service, which is responsible for producing forecasts and tracking dangerous weather phenomena like hurricanes.
But it's not all firings.
There is one exemption being granted to the government-wide hiring freeze: Chuck Ezell, acting head of the Office of Personnel Management, which has been spearheading these reductions in force, did sign off in an exemption to the hiring freeze to permit the agency to hire a chauffeur who will be responsible for driving around the agency's leadership.
You can find links to all of these stories down below. And if you stay tuned later this week on the proper WatchCats podcast, we will have a discussion with Itir Cole, formerly of the ah Centers for Disease Control, who's part of our ongoing series of discussions with ah former staff with the U.S. Digital Service.
And also later this week, a conversation with Wired reporters Makenna Kelly and Tori Elliott, who have been doing just absolutely killer work on the DOGE beat.
Please join us for that, and we'll see you soon at WatchCats.
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