agencies

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., Republican Conference Chairman Lisa McClain, R-Mich., and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., attend a press conference on the government shutdown on Tuesday. The shutdown is on its 15th day. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo

Oct. 15 (UPI) — The U.S. Senate is expected to vote Wednesday afternoon on a measure that would fund the government, and President Donald Trump said he plans to release a list Friday of “Democratic” programs he’s eliminated.

Today’s vote will be the 10th Senate vote to open the government, which has now been shut down for 15 days. Democrats and Republicans are still at odds on bills to reopen.

The ninth vote on Tuesday to fund the government until Nov. 21 failed 49-45 with six senators absent. To pass, it needs 60 votes.

Trump’s list of cut programs is scheduled to be released Friday.

“We are closing up Democrat programs that we disagree with, and they’re never going to open up again,” Trump said. “We’re able to do things that we’ve never been able to do before. The Democrats are getting killed.”

Though Trump has made funding available for service members to get their next paychecks, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., said it’s a temporary measure.

“If the Democrats continue to vote to keep the government closed as they have done now so many times, then we know that U.S. troops are going to risk missing a full paycheck at the end of this month,” Johnson said at his daily press conference.

Democrats are holding out for healthcare subsidies from the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans recently cut from the appropriations bill, and approval for Medicaid funding. Millions of Americans are expected to see their health insurance premiums skyrocket when the subsidies expire at the end of the year.

The longest shutdown lasted 35 days in December 2018 and January 2019. Johnson said that “we’re barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history unless Democrats drop their partisan demands.”

WASHINGTON — The White House is telling agencies to prepare large-scale firings of federal workers if the government shuts down next week.

In a memo released Wednesday night, the Office of Management and Budget said agencies should consider a reduction in force for federal programs whose funding would lapse next week, are not otherwise funded and are “not consistent with the President’s priorities.” That would be a much more aggressive step than in previous shutdowns, when federal workers not deemed essential were furloughed but returned to their jobs once Congress approved government spending.

A reduction in force would not only lay off employees but eliminate their positions, which would trigger yet another massive upheaval in a federal workforce that has already faced major rounds of cuts this year due to efforts from the White House’s cost-cutting team the Department of Government Efficiency, and elsewhere in the Trump administration.

Once any potential government shutdown ends, agencies are asked to revise their reduction in force plans “as needed to retain the minimal number of employees necessary to carry out statutory functions,” according to the memo, which was first reported by Politico.

This move from OMB significantly increases the consequences of a potential government shutdown next week and escalates pressure on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. The two leaders have kept nearly all of their Democratic lawmakers united against a clean funding bill pushed by President Trump and congressional Republicans that would keep the federal government operating for seven more weeks, demanding immediate improvements to healthcare in exchange for their votes.

In statements issued shortly after the memo was released, the two Democrats showed no signs of budging.

“We will not be intimidated by your threat to engage in mass firings,” Jeffries wrote in a post on X. “Get lost.”

Jeffries called Russ Vought, the head of OMB, a “malignant political hack.”

Schumer said in a statement that the OMB memo is an “attempt at intimidation” and predicted the “unnecessary firings will either be overturned in court or the administration will end up hiring the workers back.”

OMB noted that it held its first planning call with other federal agencies earlier this week to plan for a shutdown. The budget office plays point in managing federal government shutdowns, particularly planning for them ahead of time. Past budget offices have also posted shutdown contingency plans — which would outline which agency workers would stay on the job during a government shutdown and which would be furloughed — on its website, but this one has not.

The memo noted that congressional Democrats are refusing to support a clean government funding bill “due to their partisan demands,” which include an extension of enhanced health insurance subsidies set to expire at the end of the year, plus a reversal of Medicaid cuts that were included in Republicans’ big tax and spending cuts law.

“As such, it has never been more important for the Administration to be prepared for a shutdown if the Democrats choose to pursue one,” the memo reads, which also notes that the GOP’s signature law, a major tax and border spending package, gives “ample resources to ensure that many core Trump administration priorities will continue uninterrupted.”

OMB noted that it had asked all agencies to submit their plans in case of a government shutdown by Aug. 1.

“OMB has received many, but not all, of your submissions,” it added. “Please send us your updated lapse plans ASAP.”

Kim writes for the Associated Press.

Aug. 2 (UPI) — Four Ukrainians have been detained in an investigation of “large-scale” governmental corruption, the nation’s two anti-corruption agencies said Saturday.

A member of parliament, two current and former officials, and a member of the National Guard military were involved, according to the nation’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office.

They allegedly were involved in a plot to take funds appropriated for drones and electronic warfare in 2024 and 2025, NABU posted on Telegram. They also acquired and distributed “unlawful benefits on an especially large scale,” the agency said.

On Thursday, President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law passed unanimously by the parliament that restores the independence of the two agencies. One week earlier, the parliament had passed the law and Zelensky signed it that essentially ends their independence.

The former law sparked large protests and international rebuke, the Kyiv Independent reported.

In his daily video address, he said the schemes were “absolutely immoral.”

“I am grateful to the anti-corruption agencies for their work,” Zelensky posted on X. “There can only be zero tolerance for corruption, clear teamwork in uncovering it, and ultimately, a fair sentence. It is important that anti-corruption institutions operate independently, and the law passed on Thursday guarantees them all the tools necessary for a real fight against corruption.”

Detained were Oleksii Kuznetsov, a member of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party; Serhii Haidai, a former Luhansk governor; Andrii Yurchenko, head of Luhansk Oblast’s Rubizhne district and the guard member.

Kuznetsov will be dismissed from the Servant of the People in the parliament during the investigation, party leader David Arakhimia said.

In one scheme, they are accused of inflating a state contract for the purchase of electronic warfare with officials receiving a kickback of 30% of the conteact in exchange for inflating the price.

They were also involved in a similar way in state contracts for drones. A military unit signed a $239,000 contract with a producer with an overpaymernt of $80,000, the agencies said.

Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko announced the National Guard was implementing “systemic safeguards” to prevent power abuse.

“We are building a system in which honest service is protected, and there will be inevitable responsibility for violations,” Klymenko posted on Telegram.

Ukraine has been purchasing drones and weapons from other nations since Russia invaded the nation in February 2022.

Ukraine’s parliament has voted to restore the independence of two key anti-corruption agencies, moving to defuse the country’s biggest political crisis since Russia’s invasion.

Lawmakers on Thursday voted 331 to 0 in favour of the bill, which President Volodymyr Zelenskyy submitted last week following pressure from thousands of protesters and top European officials.

The measure now goes to Zelenskyy for a signature.

More to come…

Kyiv, Ukraine – Last week, hundreds of Ukrainians rallied in several cities to protest the government’s attempt to curb the independence of anticorruption watchdogs.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on July 22 signed a bill into law, which would revoke the autonomy of key agencies – the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO).

The rare protest in the war-torn country forced the Ukrainian president to introduce a new draft bill to restore the independence of NABU and SAPO, which have been established to investigate high-level corruption and are widely seen as a symbol of democratic reforms.

So, why did Zelenskyy try to curb powers of the anticorruption agencies, and will his action dent public trust in the government crucial at a time of war against Russia?

Why are Ukrainians protesting?

The nationwide protests erupted in the wake of the July 22 vote in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s lower house of parliament, to approve the bill that allows the prosecutor general to oversee the two anticorruption agencies.

The prosecutor general is appointed by the president and approved by the Verkhovna Rada, where Zelenskyy’s Public Servant party holds a majority.

It was seen as an attempt by the government to control the two agencies, which were created in the wake of the 2013-14 pro-democracy Euromaidan protests. Many believe it’s a setback from the years of reforms following the removal of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.

The protesters held banners with slogans reading “Sham!” “Don’t make a step back, there’s an abyss there,” and “Corruption applauds” the new bill.

The rallies took place in Kyiv as well as in large cities such as the Black Sea port of Odesa and Lviv, known as Ukraine’s cultural capital.

NABU has been probing a string of senior officials and lawmakers, including those within Zelenskyy’s Public Servant party.

Oleksiy, who enlisted to join the army in 2022, wonders why he should keep fighting on the front lines of eastern Ukraine while officials engage in corruption.

“What’s the point if I go back home and my family is surrounded by corruption everywhere,” the 42-year-old construction manager told Al Jazeera.

“Judges, officials, even school teachers all say, ‘Give, give, give,’” he said, asking to withhold his last name and details of his military service, in accordance with the wartime protocol.

Oleksiy, who is on a break from his service to visit his two children and ailing mother, took part in the largest antigovernment rallies in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

Why Zelenskyy backed the bill?

The new law envisaged executive control over NABU and SAPO as the prosecutor general’s office could access their information, give them binding directives, transfer cases and close down investigations.

The bill “could finally destroy the independence of the anticorruption system in Ukraine”, NABU said.

Rachel Denber, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said the new law “risks weakening Ukraine’s democratic foundations and its future integration with Europe”. She called for the repeal of the law.

Zelenskyy, a former comedian and political rookie who came to power in 2019 on an anticorruption ticket, defended the law, claiming that the NABU and SAPO have to “get rid of Russian influence”.

His allegation followed the arrest of two NABU staffers suspected of working for Russian intelligence, and charges against outspoken anticorruption campaigner Vitaly Shabunin.

Shabunin was accused of “evading military service”, but his supporters called the charges trumped-up, and almost 60 anticorruption and nongovernmental groups signed a joint appeal in his defence.

A Kyiv-based political analyst says there are two popular theories about why Zelenskyy initiated the bill.

“One is that NABU allegedly closed in on Zelenskyy’s inner circle,” Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta think tank, told Al Jazeera.

NABU accused Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov, Zelenskyy’s closest ally and lifelong friend, of taking kickbacks worth $346,000 from a real estate developer in a deal that cost the government $24m.

Zelenskyy’s press office didn’t reply to Al Jazeera’s phone calls and text messages.

“Or this is an attempt to control NABU’s actions in order not to overtly politicise them, not to provoke domestic political wars during the war with Russia,” Fesenko said.

“But I think it has to do with the activisation of the NABU on political issues that may have caused suspicion in Zelenskyy’s inner circle. That it wasn’t a fight against corruption but more of a political attack on Zelenskyy,” he said.

The protests, an anticorruption expert told Al Jazeera, have weakened Zelenskyy’s support within domestic political circles. “There was a belief in his high and stable rating,” Tetiana Shevchuk from the Anti-Corruption Action Center, a Kyiv-based group, said.

But “he no longer can demand anything from the parliament,” she said.

Zelenskyy is afraid of NABU as the only law enforcement agency that won’t open or close an investigation following a phone call from his administration, she said, referring to the centralisation of power under him.

“NABU is the only body that doesn’t do that,” Shevchuk said.

Fesenko from the Penta think tank says the politicians “underestimated” the bill’s “negative consequences”. They “didn’t think the public response would be that harsh”.

Zelenskyy has promised to submit the new bill – a move applauded by the country’s top anti-corruption investigator.

Semen Kryvonos, director of NABU, however, said that corrupt actors will step up a “dirty information campaign” against the anti-graft agencies.

Meanwhile, protest leaders say they would stop rallies only after the bill has been passed – tentatively, later this week.

Since the 2014 pro-democracy revolution or Revolution of Dignity, attempts have been made to root out endemic corruption.

Many bureaucratic procedures have been simplified and consume less time, money and nerves.

But corruption remains pervasive in the halls of justice. Ukraine ranks 105 out of 180 in Transparency International’s corruption index.

A criminal investigator who spent months putting together a string of lawsuits against a fraudster who duped dozens of people, including several lawmakers, told Al Jazeera that a corrupt judge could annul his work and the fraudster may walk free.

“We can’t guarantee any judge’s honesty,” the investigator said on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, Europe’s worst armed conflict since World War II has bred new forms of corruption.

Some officers extort bribes for letting a serviceman take leave or go to a hospital, pilfer foreign aid such as canned foods, clothes or shoes that end up on store shelves instead of the front line.

“If someone reports such an officer, they may end up in a suicide squad on zero position,” serviceman Oleksiy who took part in the protests claimed, referring to the front line positions most likely to be attacked by enemy drones.

Officers tasked with the conscription campaign have been accused of receiving bribes to smuggle people out of the country. Dozens of conscription officers have been arrested – and some had cash stashes of millions of dollars or euros or even in gold bullion.

Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov was fired in 2023 after scandals involving inflated prices for military procurement, including ammunition, foodstuffs, medical equipment and winter clothing.

His successor Rustem Umerov was investigated for alleged abuse of power, NABU said in January.

Will the curbs on anticorruption bodies affect foreign aid?

The European Union said on Sunday it would freeze $1.7bn, a third of its latest aid package for Ukraine, because of the new law.

But military aid from the EU and the United States is not likely to be interrupted, said Lt Gen Ihor Romanenko, former deputy head of Ukraine’s general staff of armed forces.

However, the protests reveal a shocking contrast between hundreds of thousands of servicemen on the front lines and the corrupt officials who dodge the draft and keep thriving on corruption.

“On one side, there are people spilling blood, and corruption remains high and even gets higher in certain areas, and people find it inadmissible,” Romanenko told Al Jazeera.

BBC

‘Hot buyers’

‘Overvaluing properties massively’

May 31 (UPI) — An three-judge federal appeals panel has kept in place a lower court’s decision to pause the Trump administration’s plans to downsize the federal workforce through layoffs.

Late Friday, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision denied an emergency motion by the federal government to stay U.S. District Judge Susan Illston‘s order on May 9 that halted terminations at 21 agencies.

The layoffs are called reductions in force, or RIFs.

In a 45-page ruling, the appeals court in California wrote the challengers likely will win the case on the merits.

The appeal panel said the Trump executive order on Feb. 13 “far exceeds the President’s supervisory powers under the Constitution.”

The Trump administration has also asked the Supreme Court to decide and has not acted.

“A single judge is attempting to unconstitutionally seize the power of hiring and firing from the Executive Branch,” White House spokesman Harrison Fields told CNN in a statement. “The President has the authority to exercise the power of the entire executive branch – singular district court judges cannot abuse the power of the entire judiciary to thwart the President’s agenda.”

Ruling for the plaintiffs were Senior Circuit Judge William Fletcher, an appointee of President Bill Clinton and Lucy Koh, selected by President Joe. Consuelo Maria Callahan, an appointee of President George W. Bush, wrote in her dissent that “the President has the right to direct agencies, and OMB and OPM to guide them, to exercise their statutory authority to lawfully conduct RIFs.”

Fletcher wrote: “The kind of reorganization contemplated by the Order has long been subject to Congressional approval.”

Illston, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton and serves in San Francisco, had backed the lawsuit by labor unions and cities filed on April 28, including San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore and Harris County in Houston. She questioned whether Trump’s administration was acting lawfully in reducing the federal workforce and felt Congress should have a role.

“The President has the authority to seek changes to executive branch agencies, but he must do so in lawful ways and, in the case of large-scale reorganizations, with the cooperation of the legislative branch,” Illston wrote after hearing arguments from both sides.

“Many presidents have sought this cooperation before; many iterations of Congress have provided it. Nothing prevents the President from requesting this cooperation — as he did in his prior term of office. Indeed, the Court holds the President likely must request Congressional cooperation to order the changes he seeks, and thus issues a temporary restraining order to pause large-scale reductions in force in the meantime.”

The coalition of organizations suing told CNN said after the appeals decision: “We are gratified by the court’s decision today to allow the pause of these harmful actions to endure while our case proceeds.”

After Trump’s executive order, the Department of Government Efficiency submitted a Workforce Optimization Initiative and the Office of Personnel Management also issued a memo.

During Trump’s first 100 days in office, at least 121,000 workers have been laid off or targeted for layoffs, according to a CNN analysis. There are more than 3 million workers among civilian and military personnel.

Some of them have taken buyouts, “including those motivated to do so by the threat of upcoming RIFs,” according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

That includes 10,000 at the Department of Health and Human Services through RIF as part of a plan to cut 20,000 employees. That includes 20% of the workforce of the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The agencies, run by Cabinet-level personnel, sued were Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Justice, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Justice, Labor, State and Treasury, Transportation, Veterans Affairs. The Education Department, which Trump wants to dismantle, was not listed, but 50% of the workforce has been let go.

Six additional agencies with statutory basis elsewhere in the United States Code were named: AmeriCorps, General Services Administration, National Labor Relations Board, National Science Foundation, Small Business Administration and Environmental Protection Agency.

Elon Musk, who officially left Friday as special White House adviser, was named in the suit.

May 20 (UPI) — The Trump administration is imposing visa restrictions on India-based travel agencies and their owners for facilitating illegal migration to the United States.

The State Department announced the punitive measure Monday amid a Trump administration crackdown on immigration, saying it was banning entry to owners, executives and senior officials of Indian travel agencies who knowingly facilitate illegal migration.

Specifics of who and what firms were targeted were not disclosed, but the State Department said its Consular Affairs and Diplomatic Security Services mission in India was working to identify those involved in human smuggling and trafficking operations.

“We will continue to take steps to impose visa restrictions against owners, executives and senior officials of travel agencies to cut off alien smuggling networks,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.

“Our immigration policy aims not only to inform foreign nationals about the dangers of illegal immigration to the United States but also to hold accountable individuals who violate our laws, including facilitators of illegal immigration.”

Under the previous Biden administration, the State Department announced a policy in July that prohibited entry to executives of travel agencies and tour operators offering services to bring migrants into the United States illegally.

It was one of several actions the Biden administration took to curb illegal migration amid criticism during a surge in migrants entering the country following the end of pandemic-era restrictions.

The Biden administration in November 2023 first implemented a policy to target Nicaraguan charter flight companies, which was late superseded by another policy that included ground and maritime transportation firms.

The Biden administration also imposed a policy to bar visa issuance to Colombian transportation companies executives and owners.

Then in March, the Trump administration announced a further expansion to the policy to ban entry to foreign government officials facilitating irregular migration by failing to enforce immigration laws or policies.

UPI has contacted the State Department for comment.

Since President Donald Trump‘s inauguration in January, the White House has conducted a crackdown on both legal and illegal immigration that includes mass deportation efforts, which have been challenged in court.