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The Department of Homeland Security said Friday that it is ending the collective bargaining agreement with the tens of thousands of frontline employees at the Transportation Security Administration, marking a major effort to dismantle union protections under the Trump administration. The TSA union called it an unprovoked attack and vowed to fight it. The department, in a statement announcing the termination, criticized the union whose staffers are responsible for keeping weapons off airplanes and protecting air travel. The department said that poor performers were being allowed to stay on the job and that the agreement was hindering the ability of the organization to safeguard our transportation systems and keep Americans safe” an assessment that faced immediate pushback from a top Democrat in Congress and the union. This action will ensure Americans will have a more effective and modernized workforces across the nations transportation networks,” the agency said in a statement. TSA is renewing its commitment to providing a quick and secure travel process for Americans. The American Federation of Government Employees is the union representing the TSA workers. The federation and the TSA’s then-administrator, David Pekoske, signed the collective bargaining agreement in May of last year. It came amid a push by Homeland Security to improve the pay for the frontline workers, whose pay has historically lagged behind that of other government employees. Pekoske has credited the pay increases, which went into effect in 2023, as helping to improve employee retention and morale, areas where TSA has had challenges. The union said in a statement that the order would strip collective bargaining rights from roughly 47,000 transportation security officers, or TSOs. Those are people responsible for staffing airports around the country and checking to make sure that hundreds of thousands of passengers a day do not carry any weapons or explosives into the secure areas of airports. The union said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and President Donald Trump’s administration were violating the right of staffers to join a union. It also said that the reasons the Republican administration had given for the decision specifically the criticisms of union activity were completely fabricated. Instead, the union said, the decision was retaliation for its wider efforts challenging a range of decisions taken by the Trump administration that have affected federal workers. AFGE represents roughly 800,000 federal government workers in Washington, D.C., and across the country, and it has been pushing back on many of the administration’s actions such as firing probationary employees and cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. Our union has been out in front challenging this administrations unlawful actions targeting federal workers, both in the legal courts and in the court of public opinion,” the union said. Now our TSA officers are paying the price with this clearly retaliatory action. The decision to end the collective bargaining agreement comes after Trump’s administration pushed out Pekoske the day Trump was sworn into office. The TSA does not currently have an administrator or a deputy administrator. In a note to staff, acting TSA Administrator Adam Stahl said Noem made the decision to rescind officers collective bargaining rights to align with the Trump administrations vision of maximizing government productivity and efficiency and ensuring that our workforce can respond swiftly and effectively to evolving threats. By removing the constraints of collective bargaining, TSOs will be able to operate with greater flexibility and responsiveness, ensuring the highest level of security and efficiency in protecting the American public, Stahl wrote. This determination is made with the TSO in mind, ensuring employee inclusivity and restoring meritocracy to the workforce. Stahl said the agency will establish alternative procedures to address employee concerns and grievances in a fair and transparent manner. The end of the collective bargaining agreement was immediately slammed by the top Democrat on the Homeland Security committee in Congress, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson of Mississippi, who praised the work of TSA staffers in protecting air travel. Attempting to negate their legally binding collective bargaining agreement now makes zero sense it will only reduce morale and hamper the workforce, Thompson said. Since the Biden Administration provided pay increases and a new collective bargaining contract to the workforce, TSAs attrition rates have plummeted. Thompson also criticized the Homeland Security press release, saying the department was using flat out wrong anti-union talking points. He said the real aim was diminishing the workforce so they can transform it in the mold of Project 2025. Project 2025 was the conservative governing blueprint that Trump insisted during the 2024 campaign was not part of his agenda. Project 2025 calls for immediately ending the TSA union and eventually privatizing the entire agency. The TSA was created after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when hijackers smuggled knives and box cutters through security to use as weapons as they commandeered four airplanes and slammed them into the Pentagon, the World Trade Center towers and a Pennsylvania field. The TSA’s mandate when it was created in November 2001 was to prevent a similar attack in the future. Air travel since then has undergone a massive overhaul, with passengers and their luggage going through extensive screening at the airport and passenger information generally uploaded to TSA in advance of travel to facilitate screening. Increasingly, the agency has also been using facial recognition technology to scan passengers at checkpoints, leading to criticism by some members of Congress. Rebecca Santana, Associated Press Associated Press reporter Michael Sisak contributed to this report.
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E-Commerce
Love ’em or hate ’em, the cicadas are coming. 2025 will bring back Brood XIV, the largest of all 17-year periodical cicada broods.Cicada enthusiasts surely don’t mind the noisy creatures. But if you’re someone who finds the constant nighttime buzz bothersome and live in one of the following 13 states, maybe consider investing in a good pair of noise-canceling earbuds. Brood XIV are expected this spring in Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. Gene Kritsky, founder of Cicada Safari, a group that crowdsources and reviews data on cicadas, told USAToday that some areas will get more of the critters than others, and that based on historical data and the weather, Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas can expect to hear the visitors first, starting as early as the end of April. It takes about two full weeks for the great bulk of the cicadas to come out, Kritsky said. Once they start coming out at a specific location, that starts the clock. Youll have cicadas at that location for the next six weeks. And though Kritsky predicts that this year’s gang will be heavy in some areas, 2024 was a much busier (and buzzier) year for cicadas. That’s because 13-year cicadas, Brood XIX, and 17-year cicadas, Brood XIII, both emerged last year, according to the University of Connecticut’s research team. That was the first time the two broods synced up since 1803, and it won’t happen again until 2037. If you’re thinking that you’ve seen cicadas way more than once every 17 years, you’re not wrong. There are seven species of cicadas that emerge on different schedules. Four have 13-year cycles and three have 17-year cycles. Plus, most cicada species are annual, which means you can seeand hearsome species every year.
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E-Commerce
Teslas stock has hit its lowest price since Election Day, hovering around the $251 threshold on midday Friday before slowly creeping back up again. Shares were down 4.6%, putting Tesla on track to erase its entire $700 billion post-election gain. The company’s year-to-date losses reached around 35%, reported Yahoo Finance. Meanwhile, CEO Elon Musks net worth has fallen from a peak of $486 billion to $330 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires List. Gains from Trump’s 2024 election victory vanish Shares of Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) had surged 91% in the aftermath of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, reaching their peak in mid-December. The rally was fueled by Wall Streets expectations that Musks near $300 million donation to Donald Trump and GOP election efforts would lead to a big win for Tesla, reported Forbes. However, the stocks sharp decline follows a series of setbacks for the company. In February, Teslas sales plummeted in Europe and China, raising concerns among investors in the EV maker. Additionally, Musks growing political involvement has raised questions of whether he is becoming distracted from his role as chief executive. On Tuesday, Bank of America downgraded Teslas stock, slashing its price target from $490 to $380. Tesla remains highly sensitive to tariffs, as China is its second-largest market and the company relies on materials from Canada for production. “Tesla is still very reliant on parts from across the world for all our businesses,” Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja cautioned in January, as Forbes reported. Tech-heavy Nasdaq leads broader market downturn Adding to the pressure, broader market turmoil has intensified. The market rally that followed the electionfueled by speculation around what Wall Street had hoped would be a more pro-business administrationhas been dampened by concerns over U.S. trade policy and slowing economic growth, according to Bloomberg. The S&P 500 has dropped more than 7% from its peak. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down a similar amount. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq Composite fell below 18,000 for the first time since October and is now trading at below its Election Day level.
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E-Commerce
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