March 7, 2025

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Guggenheim layoffs latest fallout from cash crunch at city museums

BY DUNCAN FREEMAN dfreeman@thechiefleader.com

Amid a budget crunch at cultural institutions citywide, management at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum announced Feb. 28 that it would lay off 20 workers. The layoffs, which affect members of United Auto Workers Local 2110, come three weeks after the Brooklyn Museum announced it would terminate nearly 50 employees, dozens of whom are Local 2110 and District Council 37 members.

It’s unclear exactly how many of the 20 Guggenheim employees set to be laid off are represented by UAW Local 2110. Officials from the union did not respond to requests for comment. The local’s president, Olga Brudastova, told The New York Times that the union has filed a grievance over the layoffs because management did not provide the union with advance notice of the cuts.

In a statement, a representative from the Guggenheim Foundation said that the museum had taken “proactive steps” to acclimate to challenges facing cultural institutions including rising costs and changes in tourism and attendance.

“While these efforts are creating the conditions for long-term growth and sustainability, our current financial picture requires us to make the difficult decision to reduce staffing and reorganize some teams to position the museum well for the future,” the representative said. “Our impacted colleagues have shown dedication and commitment to the museum and its mission, and we thank them for their hard work.

Looking forward, we remain optimistic about the ways we will continue to deliver on Guggenheim’s mission and vision.”

Growing its endowment, raising ticket prices and planning fewer exhibitions in the last two years did not do enough to improve the museum’s financial picture, Mariët Westermann, the museum’s director and chief executive, told The Times. She wrote in a staff letter obtained by the newspaper that the museum’s financial picture “is not where it needs to be,” and that the museum had to reduce staffing and reorganize teams.

Difficulties widespread

The financial tightropes entangling both the Guggenheim and Brooklyn Museum are part of a “huge systemic issue,” Laurie Cumbo, the city’s Commissioner of Cultural Affairs, said in a City Council hearing Feb. 28. She argued that a post-pandemic drop in tourism has resulted in declining revenue for museums and that the Brooklyn Museum was only the “latest example” of cuts that cultural institutions would have to make.

“Cultural institutions are struggling to maintain operations across the city, and many have been forced to make painful decisions,” Cumbo said at the hearing. “Many organizations are facing the same challenges.”

She warned that the cuts will “reverberate throughout our communities.” But, she added, the Brook-

James Tempro, first Black recipient of FDNY’s highest award, dies

BY DUNCAN FREEMAN dfreeman@thechiefleader.com

James Tempro ran into the burning Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment building before he could get water through his hose and onto the fire. During what would later be called one of the worst blazes of 1968, Tempro helped clear the home’s occupants without water but, as he began exiting, the firefighter heard the faint but unmistakable cry of a young boy still trapped inside.   Tempro doubled back and rescued the unconscious boy, saving him before the blaze consumed even more of the apartment. His heroic actions resulted in severe burns and smoke inhalation injuries, for which Tempro spent several weeks in the hospital.

For his lifesaving work that day, Tempro was awarded the FDNY’s highest award for valor the following year, which was then called the James Gordon Bennett Medal.   Tempro, the first Black firefighter to receive the FDNY’s most distinguished award, passed away on

Feb. 8 at the age of 96 after a long illness.  His passing was announced last month by the Vulcan Society, a fraternal organization of Black firefighters of which Tempro was an active member. The group’s historian, former firefighter Elbert Washington, wrote in a message to members that the group had lost “another Vulcan of immeasurable complexity and commitment.”   Washington added that Tempro was a “staunch union man” who was the right-hand man of former Uniformed Firefighters Association President Jimmy Boyle.   Regina Wilson, a former president of the Vulcan Society who knew Tempro personally, said last week that the former firefighter encouraged others to be “better people and better firefighters” and that he would be “sorely missed.”

“Mr. Tempro was one of the biggest advocates for African Americans, making sure that they had equality in and outside of the fire department,” Wilson said. “He was a dedicated Vulcan society member, a historian and a mentor

‘Mr. Tempro was one of the biggest advocates for African Americans, making sure that they had equality in and outside of the fire department.’

— Regina Wilson, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE VULCAN SOCIETY

to many. He was just a wonderful human being who loved his family, loved the Vulcans, and loved God.”  A spokesperson for the FDNY said in a statement that the department is “saddened by the death of Firefighter Tempro, and we join his family in mourning his loss and celebrating his history-making impact on the FDNY.”

A tarnished accolade Tempro, despite being the first Black firefighter to earn the FDNY’s highest honor, strongly disapproved of its namesake, James Gordon Bennett. A prominent mid-19th century journalist and publisher who founded the New York Herald, Bennett paid $1,500 to set up the award’s endowment as thanks to firefighters who had extinguished a fire at his home.   Bennett, in his heyday one of richest and most powerful people in the country, was also a racist. In the lead-up to and early stages of the Civil War, he penned numerous editorials in his own newspapers attacking enslaved and free Black people, used various slurs regularly, and criticized President Abraham Lincoln for fighting a war that would free enslaved African Americans.   Historians credit Bennett with helping to spark the 1863 draft riots that targeted African Americans and antislavery advocates and left hundreds dead.

BY CRYSTAL LEWIS clewis@thechiefleader.com

Nurses at NYU Langone-Brooklyn have approved a contract providing 15.8 percent in compounded raises over two years, averting a strike.

The nurses, who submitted a strike notice to management Feb. 18, had planned to walk off the job last Saturday unless hospital administrators reached a satisfactory agreement with their union before their deal expired Feb. 28.

The agreement, covering nearly 1,000 nurses, provides for an immediate 9.25-percent salary increase and a 6-percent bump effective next March 1. It also increases nurses’ base pay to $125,282 by the end of the pact.

The deal expires Feb. 28, 2027. Members of the United Federation of Teachers’ Federation of Nurses ratified the contract the night of Feb. 27.

One of the nurses’ most urgent demands pertained to chronic understaffing at the hospital. Over the past three years, the UFT has filed more than 8,000

staffing complaints alleging that the hospital ignored safe-staffing ratios set by their contract and mandated by state laws.

An arbitrator ruled in December 2023 that the nurses who worked during understaffed shifts in two medical-surge units from November and December 2022 were entitled to split the average wages of the missing nurses, which amounted to roughly $750 to $800 per shift for each nurse.

To address the persistent staffing woes, the new contract required NYU Langone-Brooklyn to have posted recruitment notices for 100 full-time nursing positions by last Saturday.

“Our nurses are the backbone of NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn,” the UFT’s president,  Michael Mulgrew, said in a statement. “The nurses forced the hospital to start paying the competitive salaries they deserve, and they forced management to drop the excuses and acknowledge that it is their responsibility

Vulcan Society

Firefighter James Tempro received the FDNY’s top award for valor from Mayor John Lindsay at Medal Day 1969. The first

Black firefighter to receive the award, Tempro passed away last month.

Duncan Freeman / The Chief

Members of United Auto Workers Local 2110 at HarperCollins on strike in early 2023. Local 2110 members are some of the 20 employees subject to layoffs at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which were announced last week.

Adams, Cuomo skip mayoral candidates forum

Union’s screening committee will endorse

BY DUNCAN FREEMAN dfreeman@thechiefleader.com

At times, the focus at last week’s District Council 37 mayoral forum was more on the candidates not in the room than the six answering questions at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center. Mayor Eric Adams had been expected to attend what would have been his first time at a mayoral forum ahead of June’s primary, but he backed out just hours before it began.

Candidates at the Feb. 26 forum addressed union members and retirees for two hours in what some who attended described as a “high energy” affair. Members made their feelings known early when the evening’s host, DC 37 executive director Henry Garrido, read out a statement from Adams saying that he pulled out of the event due to “advice of legal counsel,” prompting dozens of attendees to jeer and boo.

Garrido had asked the audience to be respectful, but he couldn’t prevent his members, and the six candidates present, from piling on Adams.

Former Assembly Member Michael Blake said that Adams was “afraid to sit on stage,” state Senator Zellnor Myrie said Adams’ absence was “disrespectful to these hard-working public servants,” and city Comptroller Brad Lander insisted that if Adams “should not be running for mayor” if he can’t answer

questions from the union members. Some in the audience  expressed their discontent by wearing shirts emblazoned “Adams Resign,” a call embraced by elected officials in the city and state ever since Adams cozied up to President Donald Trump. But DC 37 endorsed Adams in 2021, and some in union leadership still want to support Adams, a former city cop.

At a Black History Month event a week earlier, DC 37 president Shaun Francois encouraged the union to stand by Adams, according to sources who attended the event. Francois, seated in the front row at the forum, laughed along to several jokes made by the candidates about Adams, and

told PIX 11 that no decision on endorsement has been made yet.

DC 37’s endorsement process will likely begin in earnest this month when the union’s screening committee — made up of presidents of the union’s locals and other members of union leadership —interviews each candidate. Committee members will then recommend three candidates to endorse, which will be narrowed to one by the union’s full executive board and then voted on by elected delegates.

Laura Pirtle Morand, president of Local 2627, said after the forum that it was a “good first step” but that she was looking forward to hearing more from the candidates and going

through the endorsement process.

Garrido later told The Chief that “members would have liked to hear [Adams’] answers,” and suggested that he would seek to have members hear from candidates who didn’t participate in the Feb. 26 forum.

More candidates missing

Adams, speaking to reporters earlier in the day, suggested that he bowed out of the forum because there were candidates “in the shadows” and on “the sideline” who weren’t attending the forum either.

That was seemingly a swipe at the specter that’s been haunting the mayoral race for months — former Governor Andrew Cuomo who announced his intent to run days after the DC 37 forum and has led the field in early polling. He too received repeated criticism from candidates at the forum.

One of the biggest cheers of the night came during Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani’s opening statement when he attacked both absentees, saying that “unlike Mayor Adams who raised your rent or Governor Cuomo who put you in Tier 6, I have the guts to ask for your endorsement in person.”

State Senator Jessica Ramos, who arrived nearly an hour late, and former Comptroller Scott Stringer also criticized Cuomo and Adams when they weren’t making policy points.

Garrido hoped that his union’s members could hear from Cuomo in the future, saying that “if Governor Cuomo wants to be a candidate, he

should go in front of the members of DC 37.” The union leader also brought up City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams as a potential candidate who the membership would like to hear from.

The speaker has yet to enter the race but Politico reported that power brokers, among them Attorney General Letitia James and Garrido himself, have been urging Adams to run and were making phone calls on her behalf. Last week, Adams filed for a fundraising committee — the first step of potential candidacy — and told The New York Times that she would make a final decision after her State of the City address.

But the speaker, the mayor and the former governor were not present to answer Garrido’s questions about budget shortfalls, subway safety, public-sector vacancies, housing costs or health care. Without a follow-up forum featuring these candidates, selling an endorsement of any of the trio to the union’s delegates and membership will be difficult, and several members said it would be inappropriate for the union to endorse a candidate who didn’t attend.

Josh Barnett, a member of Local 375, was one of a half-dozen members who expressed frustration with the mayor’s absence. He labeled the forum a “spectator sport” because of how little influence rank and file members have in the endorsement process.

“Not enough members get any input,” he said.

Weill Cornell postdoc workers demand contract

BY CRYSTAL LEWIS clewis@thechiefleader.com

Postdoctoral workers at Weill Cornell Medicine, who have been in negotiations for their first contract for nearly a year, demanded that the institution settle a contract that provides protections for immigrant workers and parents.

The researchers, who joined the United Auto Workers in November 2023, rallied outside of the Upper East Side campus along York Avenue Feb. 27. The workers said their demands for several basic policies — such as paid time off for visa renewals, a requirement for postdoctoral workers who have moved from other countries to work at Weill Cornell — have been rejected.

“We are facing a critical issue, one that threatens our job security. The administration is pushing for a probationary period of three months, during which we could be terminated at-will,” said Maria Cecilia Lira, a postdoc in radiation oncology.

“Probation is a tool that allows discrimination to thrive,” she continued. “This policy opens the door to arbitrary termination that disproportionately harms international postdocs, women and other marginalized groups. With attacks on immi-

grants increasing under the Trump administration, the last thing we need is an additional layer of precarity placed on our shoulders.”

The postdocs are also seeking improvements to Weill Cornell’s housing policy. Krithika Karthigeyan, a third-year postdoc in pediatrics, noted that many postdocs were only told at the last minute that they wouldn’t have housing and had to scramble to find market-rate apartments.

“We know a lot of postdocs who have been left blindsided. We’re not even asking for guaranteed housing, just a more straightforward process,” she said. “WCM’s solution to insufficient housing is for postdocs to postpone their start date. Their solution is to place the onus on the postdocs.”

A year of negotiations

The university has also threatened to cut a shuttle that transports postdocs from their Roosevelt Island dorms to the Manhattan campus, the researchers said.

“With so many programs on the chopping block right now, we need real, tangible and sustainable change,” Caitlin Williams, a postdoc in pediatrics, said during the rally.

“We’re here today to show them

that the status quo is insufficient, and that we demand our fair share.”

Karthigeyan noted that the Weill-Cornell researchers had “the lowest postdocs wages in the country. [Weill Cornell is] accusing us of reaching for the ceiling when we’re not even at the floor.”

Weill Cornell did not immediately

return a request for comment. Negotiations began for the nearly 480 postdocs’ first contract last March, according to Dagan Marx, a postdoctoral associate in biochemistry and a member of the Weill Cornell Medicine Postdocs Union’s bargaining committee. He noted that Cornell postdocs earned about

$12,000 less than other researchers in the city.

“Cornell’s game is that they want us to take the same salary as Mount Sinai, but accept the cuts,” he told The Chief following the rally.

The union is also seeking provisions that will help retain workers who have children.

“We want Cornell to provide some sort of childcare benefit. We’re asking for them to contribute to a DCFSA account, which currently Cornell does not offer to postdoc employees,” said Marx, referring to a Dependent Care FSA that uses pre-tax money to pay for child care such as preschool.

“As a mother and postdoc at WCM, it’s clear to me that WCM’s resistance is contributing to a less equitable workplace,” added Laura Calvo Barreiro, a postdoc in radiology.

The workers emphasized that the protections were critical given the current threats to federal research funding.

Postdocs from other institutions — including at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where postdocs won an agreement that provided 24-percent raises following a 12-day strike — also came out to support the Weill Cornell workers’ contract demands.

NURSES: Deal avoids strike

Continued from Page 1

to correctly staff the hospital.”

“Never underestimate the strength and dedication of nurses,” added Linda Richards, a nurse in the operating room who sat on the bargaining committee. “This helps the nurses economically and helps the community because the hospital must hire more nurses.”

As compensation, NYU Langone-Brooklyn agreed to pay nurses who cared for patients during understaffed shifts a combined $1 million.

Rebecca Morogiello, a member of the bargaining committee, hopes the deal will help force the hospital to be more accountable. “We want people to be compensated if they work a shift that is understaffed, but the goal is to get the hospital to staff correctly,” she said.

One anonymous NYU Lan-

gone-Brooklyn emergency room nurse previously told The Chief that the hospital had retention issues, and that the high turnover rate left many departments with less experienced nurses.

To help retain nurses, the contract provides one-time retention bonuses worth at least $3,750 and up to $5,250. Nurses who remain in the same unit and shift for at least 18 months will qualify for the bonus. The deal also preserves the workers’ premium-free health care.

“The contract gives our nurses the respect they deserve by raising salaries and requiring NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn to hire the nurses they need to safely staff their hospital,” said Anne Goldman, the head of the Federation of Nurses/UFT. “This opens the door to improving staffing, recruitment and retention and provides the economic equity our nurses have long deserved.”

Jonathan Fickies/United Federation of Teachers

Duncan Freeman / The Chief

A cadre of District Council 37 retirees attended the mayoral forum.

Crystal Lewis/The Chief

Some state COs are fired for ignoring a deal to end strike

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS and RICHARD KHAVKINE

A wildcat strike by New York state prison guards has stretched into a third week, prompting officials to start firing workers for failing to abide by a deal to end the illegal labor action.

The state’s homeland security commissioner, Jackie Bray, said terminations began Sunday and that the state would cancel health insurance for correctional officers who have remained on strike. Their dependents will also lose coverage.

A consent award negotiated by the state and the officers’ union, the New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association, was the hoped-for-instrument to both convince and compel the guards to return to work. And while an undetermined number did so, some officers are holding out.

“Over the past 13 days we were hopeful mediation and the subsequent consent award would end this illegal strike. We did not take any action during the mediation out of respect for our employees and their families,” the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision posted on social media Sunday evening. “Today we are forced to take action to enforce our laws and collective bargaining agreement. Terminations of Officers who have been AWOL for more than 11 consecutive shifts have begun.”

Fewer than 10 officers had been fired as of Monday afternoon, Bray said, while thousands were in line to lose their health insurance benefits.

“None of these actions we take lightly,” Bray said. “We have tried at every turn to get people back to work without taking these actions.”

A spokesman with NYSCOPBA said Monday afternoon the union was withholding comment on the firings for the time being.

Corrections Commissioner Daniel Martuscello said Monday that the number of facilities with striking workers had dropped from 38 to 32 since a consent award negotiated by an arbitrator last week. They included Greenhaven, Fishkill, Shawangunk, Hudson, Taconic and Sing Sing.

“We thank those staff returning to the workforce,” Martuscello said in a statement.

“However, a large number of staff across the state continue to remain on strike, with more staff returning to duty each and every day, but it’s not allowing for us to implement the consent award and continue our ongoing dialogue,” he added.

The deal designed to end the strike included a 90-day suspension of a law limiting the use of solitary confinement, the so-called “HALT Act.”

A consent award provision notes that within 30 days Martuscello would begin to “evaluate the operations, safety, and security” of the state’s prisons according to staffing levels.

‘Our long term plan must be and is to recruit more corrections officers because our facilities run safer when we’re fully staffed.’

—Jackie Bray, HOMELAND SECURITY

COMMISSIONER

The commissioner would then determine whether to restore the HALT Act in full, with the safety of incarcerated individuals and staff the overriding factor. “This analysis will be done on a facility-by-facility basis and will be ongoing,” according to the consent award.

The state also agreed to pay overtime for the next month at a rate of 2½ times regular pay instead of the usual 1½ times and, within four months, to finish analyzing a union request to raise the salary grade for officers and sergeants.

Compounding the state corrections crisis, Governor Kathy Hochul on Tuesday said DOCCS had placed 15 employees at the MidState Correctional Facility in Marcy on administrative leave following the death Saturday of a 22-year-old prisoner, Messiah Nantwi.

“While the investigation into this incident is ongoing, early reports point to extremely disturbing conduct leading to Mr. Nantwi’s death and I am committed to accountability for all involved,” she said in a statement.The New York Times, citing accounts from other inmates, reported that he was beaten by correctional officers.

Mid-State is located across the street from the Marcy Correctional Facility, where six guards have been charged with murder in the death of Robert Brooks, who was beaten by officers in December.

Jennifer Scaife, the executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, said Nantwi’s death demonstrated to Hochul and lawmakers the need to immediately revamp the state’s correctional apparatus.

“The death of 22-year-old Messiah Nantwi following a reported use of force incident at Mid-State, the seventh death of an incarcerated individual to occur during the unauthorized strike by correctional officers, underscores the need for a complete overhaul and fundamental rethinking of the state’s prison system,” she said in a statement.

“The Governor and the Legislature must take immediate action to strengthen independent oversight, hold employees accountable for misconduct, and reduce the size of the incarcerated population through all available mechanisms.”

Some returning to posts

Corrections officers began walking out Feb. 17 to protest working conditions.

Hochul last week announced a binding agreement between the state and officers’ union to end the picketing she said addressed “many, many of the concerns raised by the correction officers.” Officers were required to return to work by Saturday to avoid being disciplined for striking.

But some officers refused the imperative to return to their posts.

The deal included ways to address staffing shortages and minimize mandatory 24-hour overtime shifts.

It also offers a temporary bump in overtime pay, a potential change in pay scale and the suspension of a prison reform law that strikers blamed for making prisons less safe.

“These individuals work in tough, tough conditions. I know that, and I appreciate it. This is a lot of time away from their families,” the governor said.

But she also noted “a lot of unpredictability” and alluded to hiring challenges for the correction posts as well as lawful absences.

“Our

MUSEUMS: Draw up layoff plans

Continued from Page 1

lyn Museum had a “solid plan” to get itself back on firm financial footing. That plan, though, seemingly does not include the dozens of employees who were laid off.

Many of the soon-to-be-terminated workers have years of experience and some are leaders in their unions. One worker set to be laid off is Liz St. George, an assistant curator with five years’ experience who chairs the 170-person unit of UAW Local 2110 members.

Speaking at last week’s Council hearing, St. George said the layoffs were a violation of the union’s contract, as did Maida Rosenstein, director of organizing for Local 2110, and Henry Garrido, the executive director of District Council 37.

Rosenstein alleged that the Brooklyn Museum was “weaponizing” the layoffs to target union members who had filed grievances against management, testified in NLRB hearings or were leaders among their colleagues. “This makes no sense except in the context of union busting,” Rosenstein said.

She further argued that the cuts were instituted without warning — which she also said was a violation of the union’s contract — and that the layoffs would result in understaffing that will “create tremendous problems for the people that remain.”

Garrido also said that the museum violated its contract with Local 1502 of DC 37 by not comply-

ing with proper layoff procedures and timelines. “We’re going to fight this tooth and nail,” he said. “There’s no reason that 47 people should be losing their job until we exhaust everything possible.”  In an email, Taylor Maatman, the Brooklyn Museum’s director of public relations, denied Rosenstein’s assertion that layoffs were targeted at specific employees. “The eliminations are based primarily on seniority,” Maatman said. “In a few instances, the museum has articulated a rationale for reduction separate from seniority to avoid losing critical subject matter expertise.”

Maatman has previously said that the museum acted in accordance with its union contracts when it announced the layoffs.

Union members testifying implored the Council to provide the Brooklyn Museum with more city funding to close the several million-dollar budget gap that necessitated the layoffs. The city already provides more than $10 million to the Brooklyn Museum alone, Cumbo said, but 80 percent of the museum’s funding comes from other sources.

After hearing Cumbo’s testimony, Garrido said that he expected museum workers to face more difficult cuts in the future.

“This is just the beginning of many layoffs that we’re going to see,” the union leader said just hours before the Guggenheim layoffs were announced.

people back to work. We need to hire more people, and we’re going to continue toward those goals,” Hochul said.

The strike violated a state law barring walkouts by most public employees. Hochul deployed the National Guard to some prisons to take the place of striking workers.

The state and union agreed to staffing and operational inefficiencies at each facility in an effort to relieve strain on existing staff.

“No matter when this ends or how this ends, our long term plan must be and is to recruit more corrections officers because our facilities run safer when we’re fully staffed,” Bray said, noting incentives that would include a $3,000 referral bonus for existing employees. “That work can’t really begin in earnest until folks return to work and we end the strike.”

The Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum has said it would terminate nearly 50 employees, dozens of whom are UAW Local 2110 and District Council 37 members, as it faces down a significant budget gap.

Kevin Rivoli/The Citizen via AP

Some state correction officers have been fired for refusing to end their illegal walkout. Above, a striking officer at the Auburn Correctional Facility in Auburn on Feb. 20, the third day of the strike.

COMMENTARY COMMENTARY COMMENTARY

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Innocent by association?

To The ediTor: NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch recently complained that Albany had undermined “broken windows,” the strategy that she claimed the police needed to fight crime.

James Q. Wilson and George Kelling in their famous 1982 Atlantic essay argued that “serious street crime flourishes in areas in which disorderly behavior goes unchecked.” As a result, there is a need to focus on not only low-level crimes that have previously been ignored, but also on disorder.

Mayor Adams, as well as Governor Hochul, appear to have adopted this public safety playbook. Both have repeatedly said that the police should address minor infractions and disorder on the subway and streets. The homeless, mentally ill and an unknown number of criminally inclined migrants have been targeted. An implicit link is made between subway and street-level disorder and violent crime.

This controversial approach to policing disproportionately affects the poor, minorities and outsiders. Deviancy is defined up for these and other less privileged groups. Yet it’s ironic that deviancy has been defined down by the behavior of Adams and other miscreant politicians such as Donald Trump and Andrew Cuomo.

New Yorkers might be confused about what is the “new normal” for the mayor of New York City. Has it become the standard of behavior established by Eric Adams? This includes multiple corruption indictments, at least 19 top aides resigning (some of whom were themselves under investigation), and the corruption case dismissed with preju-

dice by the Department of Justice so the mayor can cooperate with the policies of a lawless Trump administration.

Eric Adams has asked why he should resign before receiving due process and before being “convicted of something.” But how can the mayor receive due process and prove his innocence when he and his high-priced lawyers have done everything possible to avoid a trial?

Howard Elterman

Rethink

To The ediTor:

Do some leaders of District Council 37 really need to think twice about not endorsing Mayor Adams for a second term? (“Adams, Cuomo Skip Mayoral Candidates Forum,”

The Chief, March 7). There should be no DC 37 endorsement for a mayor who, in 2021, with news reporters and television cameras in tow, misled the FDNY EMS members of Locals 2507 and 3621.

Adams promised as mayor to give pay equity to several thousand FDNY EMTs, paramedics and officers. He’s been mayor for 3½ years; but for 2½ years he has failed to deliver a new contract to them.

According to a 2001 law, the FDNY Emergency Medical Services is to be treated as a “uniformed service” in contract negotiations. That law has never been followed. One example of disregard for the law can be found in an upbeat 2021 City Hall press release, which reads in part, “ ‘Thank you to DC 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido and his entire team for working with the City on this contract,’ ” said Commissioner Renee Campion…. This agreement conforms to the pattern reached

with other civilian unions.” Jut not “uniformed service” unions.

That last 2021 FDNY Emergency Medical Services contract, itself years overdue, ended in 2022. It’s so bad that after 5½ years on the job, a hard-working sanitation worker who collects our trash, has a base pay of $30,000 more than a medically certified FDNY EMT who rapidly responds to give emergency medical treatment and transport to our fellow New Yorkers on the worst days of their lives.

Current and retired DC 37 members, and their family members, rely on the FDNY Emergency Medical Services to be there when needed.

Helen Northmore

Unhealthy

To The ediTor:

Two stories on the same page of the Feb. 21 Chief (“Daily News journalists vow to forge ahead despite contract fight” and “Homecare nurses demand contract, restored health coverage”), both touch on a much neglected issue. Both dealt with workers’ health coverage.

Daily News’ employees had to file an unfair labor practice charge to keep their employer, Alden Global Capital, from changing their health coverage without input from the union. An agreement was reached to give them coverage they found acceptable. But it only lasts through 2026.

Nurses employed by CenterLight are experiencing the irony of having their own health coverage terminated. This was after they turned down a proposal that would have quadrupled their health care costs.

In any other developed country, this would not be an issue. They consider health care a human right. After all, it’s the difference between life and death.

Having such coverage provided through the government would no longer put your life at the mercy of your employer. It would also provide care for those who are unemployed.

Not only is implementation of such coverage impossible under the current leadership, but it was also blocked when Democrats were

in power. Senator Bernie Sanders’ Medicare-for-all proposal has never been seriously pushed by either major party.

Richard Warren

The Dems’ imperative

To The ediTor:

Democrats, the time is now. Refuse to kowtow to Republicans on funding the government. The deadline on this is March 14. Blame it on the bossa nova, the dance of love — for all people that Trump and Musk are hurting and killing by their mass deportations and the freeze on foreign aid (USAID).

Force Trump and Musk to stop demanding funding that cuts taxes on the rich and hurts the little people. Democrats can defend the legitimate government by threatening to defund the Trump government chaos, even if it causes a default on the national debt. When the unelected richest man in our nation has as much power as the president, and he’s just feathering his own nest and hurting and killing people (by freezing foreign aid). Drastic measures are necessary.

As Democratic Washington Senator Patty Murray told Punchbowl News, Democrats are committed to responsibly funding the government, but it is extremely difficult to reach agreements when the president is illegally blocking large chunks of approved spending and shuttering critical agencies.

It’s time for the Democrats, especially those in Congress, to play hardball with Trump, the traitor and friend and admirer of ruthless dictators. Make Trump pay the price for his racist, misogynistic and xenophobic policies, even if we all have to suffer.

Michael J. Gorman

Earned it

To The ediTor:

Donald Trump is now a racist (“Encroachment,” The Chief, Letters, Feb. 21)? Let me tell you a little something about racism. As a young sailor that enlisted in the Navy at the tender age of 18, I was discriminated against. Upon my separation

Silencing the voice of the people

BY MARC BULLARO

“We the people” are the first three words of the Preamble to the United States Constitution. Although the Preamble is not law, it does provide insight into the intentions of the Founding Fathers in that when a politician or government official takes an oath to the Constitution they answer to the people because, in a democracy at least, the government’s powers come from the people. But Donald Trump is not concerned with those intentions or those of “we the people” unless it benefits him. His concern is to silence dissent.

Trump’s bête noire is a media outlet that doesn’t kowtow or bootlick. But despite his hatred of independent media, the freedom of the press is still protected under the First Amendment. In 2017, The Washington Post, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, adopted the profound slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” but shortly before Trump’s second term it also adopted another slogan, “Riveting Storytelling for All of America.”

Was the new slogan added to mitigate the first? Will The Post do what the National Enquirer did and write fascinating helpful lies for Trump and “catch and kill” damaging stories? Will it be his nom de plume?

A free and independent press represents all the people and holding governmental leaders accountable is inherent in a democracy. The press is the vox populi: they ask questions that individual citizens can’t ask and conduct investigating reporting of government officials that citizens can’t necessarily do on their own. The press keeps the people informed of what its government is doing and, equally important, what it’s not doing.

But Trump and his regime believe they are immune to the press’ scrutiny. For years, Trump has falsely and maliciously lambasted media outlets that didn’t comport with him by smearing, vilifying and slanderously labeling them “the en-

emy of the people,” thereby manipulating his loyal subjects to despise a free press.

Speaking on Dec. 5, then-Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth looked directly into the camera and without any camouflage displayed his animosity for the press adamantly declaring “I don’t answer to anyone in this group, none of you, not to that camera at all.”

On Feb. 9, Trump issued an executive order renaming the 400-yearold Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. The Associated Press, though, continued to use “Gulf of Mexico” in its reporting and in retaliation the White House revoked the organization’s access to Oval Office press conferences. On Feb. 13, during a White House briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated,

“It is a privilege to cover this White House…. No one has the right to go into the Oval Office and ask the president of the United States questions. That’s an invitation that is given.”

I concede that no one can walk in the Oval Office or board Air Force One at will, but the message here is clear: Trump doesn’t want a free press. Instead, the press must surrender to him because he is a tyrant and wants to control information. The Gulf of Mexico example is, after all, just a detail of that strategy. Traditionally, news outlets that closely covered the president were chosen by an independent group. Trump’s White House is not deciding who is selected.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said in a statement, “The role of our free press is

to hold those in power accountable, not to act as their mouthpiece.”

By confining The AP, an independent not-for-profit news cooperative founded in 1846 that now reaches half the world and is relied on by many news outlets, Trump is helping suppress the flow of information to four billion people.

Days later at a press conference Trump displayed a total disregard for the First Amendment stating, “we’re gonna keep them out until such time as they agree that it’s the Gulf of America.”

from active duty, I applied for a commission in the Navy Reserve as an ensign in the Medical Service Corp. I talked to the recruiter at Floyd Bennett Field and was told that I cannot even apply for a commission because I wasn’t Black or a woman. I had all the qualifications for the position. Leading petty officer (LPO) of the medical/dental unit, a degree and most importantly, experience. Instead of complaining, I applied for that same position in the Army Reserve, the Army National Guard, the Air Force Reserve and Air Guard. Eventually after waiting 13 months, I was granted that same position in the New Jersey Army National Guard and became a second lieutenant. I left the USNR as a second-class petty officer then laterally transferred to the National Guard as a sergeant and received a direct commission. I spent 12-plus years between active duty and reserve in the Navy. I was indefatigable in seeking a commission as an officer. I may add, I was scheduled to enter FDNY probationary firefighters’ school in 1983 but was held up because of the pending lawsuit brought by women. Did I complain? No, Instead, I went to work for the United States Postal Service and was finally hired in 1985 and entered PFS, graduated and had a great career in the FDNY.

Donald Trump did not imperiously take over the presidency — he was elected by the people of the United States. Stop with your bête noire already. It’s getting old.

Dominic Genovese

Gangsters of diplomacy

To The ediTor:

It was clear as Volodymyr Zelenskyy exited his vehicle Friday that Donald Trump invited him to Washington to humiliate him, beginning with the greeting, “You’re all dressed up.” Apparently, Trump didn’t notice Elon Musk’s baseball cap and T-shirt when Musk held court over Trump’s cabinet.

I mulled over what to write after watching Trump’s and JD Vance’s performance as bad cop, worse cop.

By circumscribing the content of speech and punishing reporters for disagreeing with him, Trump again violates his oath to uphold the Constitution. It’s clear retaliation for not surrendering to Trump’s objective to control information.

Former CNN reporter Jim Acosta, who as the White House correspondent during Trump’s first term had verbal brawls with Trump, said that media outlets should stand in solidarity until Trump “backs down.” Acknowledging that Trump would then restrict the media to “right-wing hacks to cover his daily decrees,” Acosta added, “Fine, let the American people soak that in — the image of an aspiring autocrat and his servile propagandists.” Yet, having asserted that the government answers to the people, I am not naive enough to believe that politicians and government leaders have the ethics to actually believe that themselves. The reality is they answer to the lobbyists and constantly scratch the backs of the self-serving billionaire donors with one hand while pick-pocketing middle class Americans with the other.

It is an understatement to say Trump seeks to reign in and corral the free press. He desires state-controlled media, much like in Russia, China and North Korea. Clearly, this comes with great perils to Americans.

Trump’s agenda is a recipe for dismantling the United States, to destroy its functioning, its integrity and its free press. The Trump regime is a kakistocracy that seeks autocracy mixed with some theocracy surrounded by hypocrisy and built on a frail foundation of idiocracy. The pen is mightier than the sword. And a free press is the antidote to Trump’s poison.

In N.Y. Times v U.S., 1971’s Pentagon Papers case, the Supreme Court held that the government cannot impose restraints on the media unless it meets the burden of “strict scrutiny,” meaning that it must show a “compelling state interest” and prove its actions are justified. There is no compelling interest present that justifies prohibiting the Associated Press from using the name “Gulf of Mexico” and the government cannot restrict journalists from attending Oval Office press conferences simply because it doesn’t like their reporting.

Evan Vucci/AP Photo

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt during a Feb. 25 press briefing in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House.

COMMENTARY COMMENTARY COMMENTARY

Going postal

BY RON ISAAC

Will postal workers soon be as insecure as a Cybertruck’s body panel?

Whether by chainsaw or sledgehammer, the efficiency ghouls in Washington are already doing violence to labor contracts, making a mockery of the meaning of “legally binding,” and pouring quicklime over the body of legacy principles of due process and the rule of law.

The United States Postal Service may be sacrificed on the holiest of altars: elusive solvency in a profligate nation. By whipping its employees to the tune of “Git Along Little DOGEies,” the privatizers think they can whip what they consider a boondoggle into shape.

Our postal service, which predates the Revolutionary War, when we fought against a king centuries before refashioning the throne as a Resolute Desk, has a popularity rating among the public that is at least double the percentage that holds Congress in esteem. And postal employees do work that is far more demanding, varied and sometimes hazardous than is generally realized and they do it with greater attentiveness to duty than have most of our legislators. And their rounds include rural areas where wolverines and FedEx fear to tread and there are more rattlesnakes than people. And the flat envelope sent through the USPS carries the same postage if sent to a destination 3,000 miles away in a dense forest or mountain peak, as if to your neighbor next door.

Reagan, Bush Picks

Hypocrisy On Supreme-Court Choice

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simply because it is hemorrhaging money.

did much to change the color of the budget ink from black to red.

It is self-financing, but not allowed to self-determine when prices must be raised, services cut or expanded to more profitable areas, and it must provide services six days a week. It’s unfair to demand results from the USPS and hold them accountable for failure to achieve them, when the means to do so are deliberately withheld from them. Congress hogtied the USPS so it cannot move to generate revenue and then blames it for stagnation.

Much of the criticism of the USPS is not driven by good faith but rather is rooted in pro-privatization ideology that is fueled by think tanks, including private equity investors whose partisanship has predetermined their thoughts long before its first brain wave undulated past the starting gate. In 2018, President Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget sought to sell off the USPS claiming that privatization would reduce costs, make it more adaptable to customer preferences and shift the cost of improvements from taxpayers to profits from capital investments. In the meantime, it  would sustain it through starvation.

THE CHIEF-LEADER, FRIDAY,

But USPS pay is barely in a middle-class bracket. Privatization of the USPS has been on the backburner for many years. Now it is being fast-tracked with a Muskian vengeance, along with arbitrary cross-agency mass firings of federal employees.

The latest contemplated scheme is a hostile takeover of the USPS by the Commerce Department, which could swallow and digest it whole or keep it semi-autonomous on a tight regulatory tether.

“Bailouts and handouts” are over, squawked House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, a Kentucky Republican who habitually sounds the alarm against the domino effect of governmental institutions that have trace elements of mercy in their administration.

Letters to the Editor

mailboxes to private companies should be revived, breaking the USPS’s monopoly but partially filling its almost bottomless budget hole. Over the three years prior to 2023, the volume of first-class mail was slashed by half, which amounted to over 50 billion items. Cato Institute reported that the 2023 per capita mail volume was only 37 percent of what it had been three years earlier.

ping and delivery conduit to independent retailers.”

In an exhaustive report, the EPI observes “The Postal Service is a lifeline in the wake of terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and other emergencies. It is a key part of our .. .national security infrastructure … was critical to reconnecting displaced persons, distributing relief funds and delivering medicine.”

For over 50 years, the USPS has been an “independent agency under the executive branch, free of direct political control,” as the Reuters news service recently put it. That abstraction has been contradicted by the hard knocks of reality. Since the president is the alpha and omega of executive branch authority, his exercise of raw supremacy is infallible. Nine of the 11 members of the agency’s board of governors are appointed by him. Means nothing; he can sack them for sport.

The DOGE hangman has a scaffold. The Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, a trap door. That act prohibits the closing of any post office

George Herbert Walker Bush had to replace the first African American, Thurgood Marshall. He looked all over the country and the “most-qualified” was Clarence Thomas, also an African-American? Of course not. Clarence Thomas is an African-American conservative and he got the gig. Expect a Top Candidate Let’s please stop the nonsense in this country. We have never had an African-American woman on the court. Biden will not be selecting a cashier from Stop-and-Shop or a pilates instructor from the local sports club. He will select a highly educated, highly credentialed woman who attended a top college, top law school, clerked for a Justice, served on the Federal appellate court and all the other “credentials” deemed necessary in this day and age for a Justice.

The attacks on this decision should be seen for what they are. They are idiotic political theater from a cohort that sees even a tiny effort at progress as threatening the white male position in society.

BARRY LISAK

Vincent Scala is a former Bronx Assistant District Attorney. He is currently a criminal-defense attorney in New York City and its suburbs.

BARRY LISAK

3. If you received income from other sources, your benefits will not be taxed unless your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) is more than the base amount for your filing status.

4. The 2024 base amounts are: $32,000 for married couples filing jointly, $25,000 for the other filing statuses, $0 for married persons filing separately who lived together during the year.

5. You can do the following quick computation to determine whether some of your benefits may be taxable: First, add one-half of the total Social Security benefits you received to all your other income, including any tax-exempt interest. Then, compare this total to the base amount for your filing status. If the total is more than your base

additional deduction because she is 70 years old. Her standard deduction for 2021 is $14,250 ($12,550, the standard deduction for 2021, plus $1,700, the 2021 additional standard deduction for the singles who are over 65 or blind). Example 2 In 2021, Nicole and her spouse are joint filers. Both qualify for an additional standard deduction because they are both over 65. Their Form 1040 standard deduction is $27,800 ($25,100, the 2021 standard deduction for joint filers, plus 2 x $1,350, the 2021 additional standard deduction for married persons who are over 65 or blind). The above examples reflect the benefit of the new standard deduction. Millions of taxpayers won’t be itemizing this year to reduce their Federal income-tax bill.

To the Editor:

Although the USPS has sustained many billions of dollars of longterm unfunded liabilities and debt (perhaps equal to unaccounted-for grants to warring nations abroad), its financial picture, though not rosy, is less pallid, except for mandatory pension and health costs, notes the Washington Post’s Jacob Bogage, who warns of the potentially adverse impact on e-commerce, if the Commerce Department absorbs the USPS.

Audacity to Criticize Molina

On Feb 19, the NY Daily News published an article entitled, “As NYC Correction Commissioner Molina cleans house, critics worry he’s coddling jail unions.”

Privatization “could result in higher costs, slower deliveries and reduced services,” and because of the USPS’s statutory universal service obligation, “risks undermining its role in providing affordable and equitable service nationwide,” according to Investopedia.

Outsourcing is the mother’s milk of anti-union privatizers.

Regarding budgetary woes, the EPI observes that the “Postal Service has had to borrow or default on retiree benefit contributions” for many years, due to the Postal Ac countability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) , which “required the Post al Service to begin prefunding re tiree health benefits and pay down these costs within 10 years.” This

OMB’s functionaries also advocated for reducing customer service based on cost-effectiveness and conforming to a business model that would marginalize labor unions, terminating fundamental member benefits and panning off accumulated pension liabilities to taxpayers in order to make the USPS more attractive for buyers. They demonize “special interests,” which for them is code for labor unions. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin at the time begged for the destruction of collective bargaining rights for postal employees.

The USPS’ problems are attributable largely to sweeping and profound changes beyond its control. They are dragged down by mandates that do not bind companies like FedEx and Amazon. The USPS cannot pick and choose its services on a basis of prospective stock dividends. Their performance should not be assessed by the same criteria as profit-making corporations, which can eliminate less lucrative services that are compulsory for the USPS.

Whether it’s a newly elected Mayor, Governor or President, every new administration replaces personnel, notwithstanding their work performance. No reason is needed to remove someone in an appointed position within NYC government with the exception of the Commissioner of the Department of Investigation, even though there is more than enough justification to fire all the top managers in DOC.

Traditional mail has undergone radical reconstructive surgery in the years since the digitalization of communications and banking.

THE CHIEF-LEADER welcomes letters from its readers for publication. Correspondents must include their names, addresses and phone numbers. Letters should be submitted with the understanding that all correspondence is subject to the editorial judgment of this newspaper. To submit a letter to the editor online, visit thechiefleader.com and click on Letters to the Editor.

The USPS may not be moving with the times, but synchronization with the clock and calendar are within management’s bailiwick. If the workers had seats at the table, no doubt there would already be remedies in progress. The privatizers don’t sincerely want to repair the USPS. They are like the sociopathic nurses we sometimes read about, who pull the plug on recovering patients.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Continued from Page 4

Privatizing the USPS because it is uneconomic is a logical fallacy that sounds reasonable but leads to erroneous and malicious conclusions. Don’t leave it alone. Brace and em-

Perhaps the idea of franchising

Top managers likely get their jobs through political connections and serve entirely at the pleasure of the Mayor. Moreover, the personnel that Louis Molina removed were in charge of critical units which they failed to lead effectively.

DOC was on the brink of an implosion as a result of the feckless leadership of Vincent Schiraldi and his coterie. Now Schiraldi, who was the worst DOC commissioner in its 127-year history, is questioning Molina’s personnel decisions.

How is it that Schiraldi, a so-called juvenile-justice reformer and expert, failed so miserably in managing DOC?

amount, some of your benefits may be taxable.

6. If you are single and your total combined income for the year is between $25,000 and $34,000, then up to 50 percent of your benefits can be taxed. If your income is greater than $34,000, then up to 85 percent of your benefits can be taxed. An example: Ashley, who is single, has 2024 earnings of $16,000, $500 in interest income, and $700 in dividends. She also receives $10,800 net Social Security benefits. Ashley’s provisional income is $22,600 ($16,000+$500+$700+$5,400 — onehalf of the net Social Security benefits). Since $22,600 does not exceed the $25,000 base amount, none of Ashley’s Social Security benefits are taxable.

How is it that Oren Varnai, the head of DOC’s Intelligence Bureau and a “former covert officer in the CIA,” could not stop the scourge of gang violence from dominating and ravaging Rikers? Varnai, at least, must be commended for wishing Molina success, and I must say he has impressive credentials.

How does Sarena Townsend, the Deputy Commissioner for Investigations and a former prosecutor who preferred departmental charges on thousands of uniformed staff—resulting in scores if not hundreds of correction officers being fired or forced to resign—now cries foul when she gets fired ?

Married couples filing jointly whose combined income is between $32,000 and $44,000, up to 50 percent of your benefits can be taxed. Incomes greater than $44,000 are taxed at the 85-percent rate. Another example: Brandon and Sydney, a husband and wife who have $24,000 in Social Security income and $25,000 of other income would pay taxes calculated as follows: These taxpayers would add half of their Social security income ($12,000) to their $25,000 in other income for a provisional amount of $37,000. Next step, find the amount by which their income exceeds the $32,000 threshold ($37,000-$32,000). The excess amount is $5,000 and half of that is $2,500. Now all they have to do is add $2,500

Schiraldi praises his managers who created a “war room” to redeploy staff on an emergency basis. That “war room” should have also been utilized to generate and implement new policy to stop the devastating inmate violence that inflicted pain and suffering on officers and inmates alike. Further, the now-garrulous Schiraldi was speechless when the unions continuously sounded the alarm regarding chaos, bedlam, lawlessness and gross mismanagement by top bosses. Commissioner Molina is addressing all those issues. Neither Schiraldi, nor any of his senior managers, have the credibility or standing to

The USPS can be organically reinvented with some minor skin shedding.  It will never be obsolete, though its managerial culture and operational parameters may be archaic. The Economic Policy Institute suggests that it could “compete with Amazon as a one-step shop-

criminals and probably require arrests, prosecutions and imprisonment? If the homeless who are removed from the subways refuse to cooperate with programs designed to help them turn their lives around, what are the penalties? Will they be arrested or placed in secure mental facilities where they will be less likely to do harm to others?

But Times columnist David Brooks put it best: “I was nauseated, just nauseated. All my life, I have had a certain idea about America, that we’re a flawed country, but we’re fundamentally a force for good in the world…. What I have seen over the last six weeks is the United States behaving vilely, vilely to our friends in Canada and Mexico, vilely to our friends in Europe.

“And today was the bottom of the barrel, vilely to a man who is defending Western values, at great personal risk to him and his countrymen…. And he and Vladimir Putin together are trying to create a world that’s safe for gangsters, where ruthless people can thrive. And we saw the product of that effort today in the Oval Office… am I feeling grief? Am I feeling shock, like I’m in a hallucination? But I just think shame, moral shame. It’s a moral injury to see the country you love behave in this way.”

Rojo Carranza reveals there is more to the story than some are suggesting (“The Bully Pulpit,” The Chief, Letters, Feb. 28). Reports conflict as to the extent and target of the bullying, the scope of the investigation and intervention by the Gainesville Independent School District, allegations of inappropriate touching by a family member, and what the girl’s mother did or did not know. Nor do we know what those who are alleged to have bullied the girl were exposed to at home. It is simply not possible to conclusively conclude what caused this girl’s suicide. I don’t approve of a scorched earth, slash and burn approach to deportation. Undocumented immigrants deserve humane treatment while being detained and deported. Families should not be separated. There is no excuse for hatred and bigotry coming from any elected official.

in taxable Social Security income to their other income and their total taxable income becomes $27,500.

7. The federal taxable portion of your Social Security benefits cannot exceed 85-percent of your total benefits. Most importantly, all Social Security benefits are exempt from NYS and NYC taxes.

Those homeless people who are mentally or emotionally incapable of living safely with others have to be “imprisoned,” either in prisons (if convicted of crimes) or in secure mental institutions. Those who refuse to cooperate with reasonable and necessary treatment from qualified and competent authorities have to be treated the same way—prison or secure mental facilities. Only those homeless who cooperate with those who provide necessary treatment, and can live peacefully with others, should be placed in housing in the neighborhoods in all five boroughs of the city.

Joseph Cannisi

Burdens of proof

To The ediTor: An online search of the horrific suicide of the poor girl Jocelynn

But I find it curious that those who espouse a romantic view of illegal immigration ignore its dark side. It is heartbreaking to see mothers in the subway carrying their children on their back hawking chocolate candy and gum; I once saw a girl of about 9 on the subway selling candy alone.

MICHAEL J. GORMAN

8. If you do have to pay federal taxes on your Social Security benefits, you can have the taxes withheld from your benefits. You can choose to have 7 percent, 10 percent, 12 percent, or 22 percent of your total benefit payment withheld. Simply complete Form W-4V, Voluntary Withholding Request, and file it with the Social Security Administration (1-800-SSA-1213). Alternatively, you can make quarterly estimated tax payments to the IRS.

9. If both you and your child received Social Security benefits, you must use only your own portion (and not your child’s portion) of the benefits in figuring if any part is taxable on your tax return.

For additional information on the taxability of Social Security benefits, see IRS Publication 915, “Social Security and Equivalent Railroad Retirement Benefits.”

This publication is available on the IRS website, www.irs.gov, or by calling 800-829-1040.

Barry Lisak is an IRS enrolled agent specializing in personal and small business taxes for 30 years. Any questions can be directed to him at 516-829-7283, or mrbarrytax@aol. com.

To the Editor: The proposed New York Health Act would provide on a statewide level what Medicare-for-All would provide nationwide. Yet in recent issues, it has been claimed that the reason some unions oppose this is because the medical plans they already have provide benefits that this proposal would not include. Now as a retired transit worker, I have always had good health coverage since I started working for the system in 1979. But one friend who was an excellent Transport Workers Union Local 100 rep had serious health issues before he recently passed away. He had a stroke while he was still working, and had to fight numerous large bills for medical care that was supposed to be covered. I remember him saying, “I have great coverage as long as I don’t get sick.” Under the New York Health Act, patients would not have to worry about fighting bills. They would not

Skeptical of Union ‘Health’

VINCENT SCALA

Nat Weiner

Paul Chin/San Francisco Chronicle via AP

A USPS employee inspected mailboxes taken out of circulation and lined up behind a San Jose, California, post office.

To these Black retirees, the federal civil service was a path to the middle class

It offered an opportunity to end discrimination in many workplaces

BY GARY FIELDS Associated Press

Evelyn Seabrook was able to buy a home even though she had only a high school diploma. Glenn Flood worked his way up the career ladder to become a public affairs officer for former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. And Calvin Stevens had a dual military and federal service career that took him to high levels in both.

Now in their late 70s and early 80s, the three retirees are part of a generation of Black Americans who used the military and federal civil service to pursue the American dream. They acknowledge there were challenges. But they believe they received more opportunities in the military and as government employees than they would have in a private sector where racial discrimination and patronage were common at the time they were ready to enter the workforce.

“I am glad I chose to be in federal service,” Seabrook said. “Even with all the drawbacks, my personal life was enhanced by my federal job.” Seabrook, Flood and Stevens have more than 120 years of combined military and federal service. As leaders in various capacities in the National Active and Retired Employees Association, they are plugged into the siege federal employees are under during the opening weeks of President Donald Trump’s second term. It started with the elimination of programs promoting diversity, equity and inclusion and has expanded to a culling of the federal workforce under Elon Musk, a special adviser to the Republican president. Musk also seeks to eliminate agencies as head of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

They say one thing being lost in the attacks on the federal workforce is its important history as a stepping stone into the middle class for minorities when paths were limited, in particular for Black Americans.

Speaking from their homes near Orlando, Florida, and in Decatur, Georgia, and Palm Springs, California, the retirees said when they

came into the military and federal service decades ago, the push wasn’t about diversifying the workforce. Rather, the opportunities were about ending the discrimination that left qualified people of color on the outside of many workplaces.

Then-President Lyndon Johnson addressed the problem of employment discrimination through law and executive order. That opened the door wider to the U.S. Postal Service, the military and many other federal jobs where Black professionals got their first chance to pursue executive-level jobs, said Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League.

“The progress in federal civilian employment was far faster and far greater than it was in the private sector,” which was “far slower to create the opportunity to run nondiscriminatory hiring practices,” he said.

The result was a rise in the Black middle class, especially in places like Washington, D.C., where workers entered the system in lower-level jobs but rose through the ranks based on performance, he said.

“At one point, DC had the highest median income for African Amer-

icans in any city in the country,” Morial said.

For now, the federal government is the largest single employer in the U.S. with about 3 million workers, which includes 600,000 with the U.S. Postal Service but not the active duty military. While Black Americans are nearly 14 percent of the population overall, they make up nearly 19 percent of the federal workforce.

Proud to be hired, promoted on merit Seabrook, 80, began her Social Security Administration career in New York City in 1966 and worked for the federal government for more than 39 years.

The irony of hearing and seeing DEI used as a signal for unworthiness is that there was no affirmative action or special programs to recruit people like her when she started working. “The only initiatives I have seen was if you were a veteran” and points were added to your test score, she said from her home in Florida. “In terms of ethnicity, culture, race, that wasn’t even part of the picture. We weren’t thinking about it then.”

Even the full impact of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 came years after she started working. She took tests and those scores led to interviews. Preferences weren’t “part of my life or how I got promoted or not. I got promoted because I could understand the work. I never went in under incentive programs.”

Her own career path was not entirely smooth and included complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Nevertheless, she continued moving up in positions and even helped train new employees.

“It certainly was very helpful in me maintaining a level of living that I probably could not have done elsewhere,” Seabrook said.

Flood, 78, was a Navy officer who also served in the reserves and at the Pentagon, where he was one of the regular briefers for former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He said federal service was instrumental in helping people of color show their abilities.

Flood said the times now are “scary” because of the impact on the federal workforce and how departments and agencies are responding

to the administration’s moves to gut them: “There’s important work out there, and not everything is in D.C,” he said from his home in the Southern California desert. His old department, Defense, issued instructions saying it would no longer acknowledge Black History Month, Native American Heritage Month or similar commemorations of culture and history. But he said recognizing that history is important to show how far certain groups have come.

His father also was in the Navy but could serve only as a steward.

“I am very proud of my civil service and my Navy career” and its role in his “middle-class life,” Flood said. “That was not something you could take lightly.”

Stevens, 77, spent 31 years in the Air Force and Air Force Reserves and more than three decades with the General Services Administration. He, like Flood and Seabrook, said his experience wasn’t always smooth, but that he had mentors who helped.

As his career went forward, he would take it upon himself to get whatever training he needed, paying out of his own pocket so he could advance. One goal was to serve as a role model and mentor for others, and he suggested that recruitment efforts include Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the Atlanta area, where he was based and now lives. He recalls people of color coming into the service with degrees, often advanced ones.

He realizes that some might have viewed him merely as an affirmative action hire, “but I met the qualifications,” he said. “I was educated and I was trying to advance, taking classes on my own” to train and prepare for each position he sought.

Stevens said his military and federal career gave him a blessed life, and that he is saddened to see the whole system under attack.

“A lot of people went to the federal sector because that was a middle-class opportunity,” he said. “Some did have degrees and some did not, but they felt that the government, their positions, were secure. They had benefits and they feel that they had a fair opportunity for promotion.”

The AP’s Sharon Johnson contributed to this report

Olivia Bowdoin/AP Photo

Air Force Reserve veteran Calvin Stevens outside his home in Decatur, Georgia, in early February.

New Jersey lawmakers look to codify limits on confidentiality agreements

BY NIKITA BIRYUKOV New Jersey Monitor

New Jersey lawmakers are moving to codify court-set limits on confidentiality agreements that would bar workers from speaking publicly about retaliation, harassment or discrimination.

The state’s Senate Labor Committee on Monday will weigh whether to extend a state prohibition on non-disclosure agreements to other types of confidentiality agreements that could bar speech about workplace abuses.

“We shouldn’t be allowing powerful employers to bully people into not speaking out when speaking out is absolutely the right thing to do and should be their right,” said bill sponsor Sen. Declan O’Scanlon, a Monmouth County Republican.

The move follows a unanimous New Jersey Supreme Court from May on the state’s existing ban on settlement and contract provisions prohibiting victims from discussing claims of discrimination, harassment or retaliation. The court ruled that the ban also extends to non-disparagement agreements.

That statute was enacted in 2019 through amendments to the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination sponsored by former state Sen. Loretta Weinberg, a Democrat who represented portions of Bergen County. It bars confidentiality agreements in those circumstances but names only non-disclosure agreements.

“The intent of the original Weinberg bill was to address this issue in totality. It didn’t, but it’s a simple fix. Both myself and Senator O’Scanlon want to ensure there is no possible question of what the legislative intent was,” said bill sponsor Sen. Andrew Zwicker, a Middlesex County Democrat.

The absence of non-disparagement and other types of confidentiality agreements drew attention after Neptune Township moved to

enforce provisions of its settlement with former police Sergeant Christine Savage.

Neptune alleged that, during a 2020 television interview where Savage referred to the township’s “good ol’ boy system,” she violated non-disparagement provisions of a settlement reached to resolve her claims of gender-based discrimination, harassment, and retaliation.

A trial court judge agreed with the township, and an appellate panel found the non-disparagement was legal, though they ruled Savage had not run afoul of the settlement’s confidentiality provisions because her comments repeated already public information and focused on present conduct rather than past conduct. The Supreme Court then sided with Savage.

The Supreme Court’s decision means the bill, first introduced in 2022, would change little if it becomes law, though it would at least settle concerns about a future Supreme Court issuing a different interpretation of the statute.

“Court cases can change. I don’t think this one will, but the bill was already in the works, and there’s no harm in codifying this,” O’Scanlon said.

O’Scanlon added the bill could serve as a message of support to victims of workplace abuses.

The bill would also remove provisions of existing law that exempt collective bargaining agreements from the prohibition.

Zwicker said that language made it into the original legislation over lawmakers’ concerns about overstepping into union negotiations.

He noted collective bargaining contracts typically contain similar workplace protections and said lawmakers would consult with counsel to determine whether it is necessary to end the exemption.

“I don’t want to carve out a loophole here in any way, but I want to talk to a labor lawyer about that in

particular before deciding whether we should keep that or remove it,” Zwicker said.

The bill is not expected to face many barriers as it moves through the Legislature. The Senate unanimously approved the 2019 legislation and the Assembly passed that bill in an overwhelming bipartisan vote. Even the removal of the collective bargaining is unlikely to draw naysayers, O’Scanlon said.

“That would be pretty stunning, if they’re going to come out in the light of day and say, ‘In our contracts, entities should be allowed to bully people and harass them without any accountability,’” he said. “Good luck. Please come out.”

The New Jersey Monitor is an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan news site.

Former NYCHA super gets 41 months in prison for bribery

BY CRYSTAL LEWIS clewis@thechiefleader.com

A superintendent at the city Housing Authority was sentenced to 41 months in prison and ordered to pay restitution following her conviction in a pay-to-play scheme that netted her more than $50,000 in exchange for work contracts worth more than a half-million dollars.

Joy Harris, 49, of Bushkill, Pennsylvania, was sentenced Feb. 26 for accepting $54,150 in bribes from vendors seeking nobid contracts between 2015 and 2021. Prosecutors said Harris typically demanded 10 percent of the contract value — usually, $500 to $1,000 — from vendors seeking contracts for repair jobs. She began working at NYCHA in 2001 and served as an assistant superintendent and a superintendent at various developments in Manhattan during her time at the authority, including at the East River Houses, Lehman Village and the Taft Houses. Harris was among 70 current and former NYCHA superintendents and assistant superintendents charged with bribery and extortion offenses in February 2024 as part of a large takedown by the U.S. Department of Justice. She was suspended without pay upon her arrest.

“Joy Harris was given a position of public trust in New York City.  She used that position to demand bribes in exchange for approving important repair work at NYCHA buildings. As today’s sentence shows, those who abuse positions of public trust — at any level of government — to seek personal gain will face a harsh penalty,” Acting U.S. Attorney Matthew Podolsky said in a statement. Harris was convicted of federal bribery and extortion counts following a week-long trial in Octo-

ber.

U.S. District Judge Valerie E. Caproni of the Southern District of New York ordered Harris to three years of supervised release, in addition to her prison sentence. She must also pay $54,150 in restitution to NYCHA and forfeit $54,150 in illegal proceeds. So far, 64 of the 70 employees involved in the takedown have been convicted. The cases of the remaining six accused employees are pending.

The city Department of Investigation was among numerous agencies investigating the schemes.

“As a NYCHA superintendent, this defendant had a duty to maintain and improve housing conditions for residents of NYCHA housing authority. Instead, she exploited her position and authority to award no-bid contracts, demanding and accepting tens of thousands of dollars in bribes from vendors in exchange for hundreds-of-thousands of dollars in contracts,” DOI Commissioner Jocelyn E. Strauber said in a statement. “Her illegal conduct drained resources that should have benefited NYCHA residents. Today she faces the consequences of her actions. I thank the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and our federal law enforcement partners for their commitment to ensure integrity in procurement and public spending.”

Superintendents at NYCHA, the nation’s largest public-housing authority, are allowed to hire vendors without going through the bidding process as long as the contracts are under $10,000. The system has been criticized for being vulnerable to corruption, and the DOI has made recommendations to improve the micro-purchasing process, several of which have been implemented by NYCHA.

Tempro couldn’t square his own identity with Bennett’s legacy, which pushed him to publicly declare his desire to return the medal in 2017.

“He realized the history of Gordon Bennett and felt he didn’t want any association with it,” said Wilson, who spoke with Tempro about his reservations in 2017. “He said he didn’t want this award if it came from a racist.”  The award named after the pro-slavery publisher was first handed out in 1869, exactly 100 years before Tempro received it.

While seeking to return the award, Tempro asked then-FDNY Commissioner Dan Nigro if they could change the name once and for all. Three years later the department did just that, replacing Bennett’s name with that of Peter J. Ganci Jr., the former chief of department who was the highest ranking uniformed FDNY member killed on 9/11.

“I picked up the phone and Commissioner Nigro told me the great news and I was elated,” Tempro said at the time. “I think very highly of the commissioner, he’s a good friend and I think he took a wonderful stance with this change. I think it’s important that the medal now honors one of our own in the FDNY and that it honors a 9/11

NJ State Senator Andrew Zwicker

Bipartisan legislation sponsored by New Jersey State Senators Andrew Zwicker, pictured, and Declan O’Scanlon would codify court-set limits on how non-disparagement and other confidentiality agreements can shield workplace abuses. Above, Zwicker, a Middlesex County Democrat, on the picket line with UAW Local 2326 members during their fight for affordable health care benefits in Dayton, NJ, in June 2023.

Administrative Procurement Analyst

The Department of Citywide Administrative Services established a 728-name list for Administrative Procurement Analyst on December 18, 2024. The list is based on Exam 3107, which was recently held. Readers should note that eligible lists change over their fouryear life as candidates are added, removed, reinstated, or rescored. The list shown below is accurate as of the date of establishment but list standings can change as a result of appeals. Some scores are prefixed by the letters v, d, p, s and r. The letter “v” designates a credit given to an honorably discharged veteran who has served during time of war. The letter “d” designates a credit given to an honorably discharged veteran who was disabled in combat. The letter “p” designates a “legacy credit” for a candidate whose parent died while engaged in the discharge of duties as a NYC Police Officer or Firefighter. The letter “s” designates a “legacy credit” for being the sibling of a Police Officer or Firefighter who was killed in the World Trade Center attack on Sept. 11, 2001. Finally, the letter “r” designates a resident of New York City.

Below is a roundup of New York City and State exams leading to public-service positions. Most of the jobs listed are located in the New York Metropolitan area and upstate.

There are residency requirements for many New York City jobs and for state law-enforcement positions.

Prospective applicants are advised to write or call the appropriate office to make sure they meet the qualifications needed to apply for an exam. For jobs for which no written tests are given, candidates will be rated on education and experience, or by oral tests or performance exams.

DCAS Computer-based Testing and Application Centers (CTACs) have re-opened to the public. However, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, walk-ins are no longer accepted and appointments must be scheduled online through OASys for eligible list or examination related inquiries.

All examination and eligible list related notifications will be sent by email only, you will no longer receive notifications via the US mail.

All new hires must be vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus, unless they have been granted a reasonable accommodation for religion or disability. If you are offered city employment, this requirement must be met by your date of hire, unless a reasonable accommodation for exemption is received and approved by the hiring agency.

For further information about where to apply to civil service exams and jobs, visit the thechief.org/exams.

The Federal Government has decentralized its personnel operations and holds few exams on a national or regional basis. Most Federal vacancies are filled by individual agencies based on education-and-experience evaluations. For information, contact the U.S. Office of Personnel Management or individual agencies, or see www.usajobs.gov.

➤

JOB HIGHLIGHT

The New York State Unified Court System Office of Court Administration has announced an open competitive examination for court officer-trainees.

Applications will be accepted from 10 a.m. Wednesday, March 12 through Wednesday, June 11. A $30 non refundable and non-transferable application fee, plus a 2.99 percent credit/debit card non-refundable and non-transferable service fee, is required to file for this examination.

UPCOMING EXAMS LEADING TO JOBS WILL FILL JOBS: CITY CERTIFICATIONS

60021730 Complaint Investigator, Bilingual (Spanish) $45,000$60,00060025730 Assistant School Lunch Manager $48,000-$63,000

60026720 Athletic Trainer $75,000$85,000

89178010 Administrative Assistant/ Administrative Assistant I $45,623$95,113; NHCC: $55,373-$78,048

89302010 School Lunch Manager

$109,751-$146,328

89303010A Administrative Assistant, Bilingual (Spanish)/ Administrative Assistant I, Bilingual (Spanish) $45,623-$95,113

89303010B Administrative Assistant I, Bilingual (Urdu) $60,000-$90,000

➤ OPEN CONTINUOUSLY

7078 CR(D) Cytotechnologist I $43,863$91,243

7094 CR(D) Cytotechnologist II $52,099$108,383

7095 CR(D) Cytotechnologist III $66,357$132,168 61-639 CR Librarian I $43,000-$61,333 60-180 CR Librarian I, Bilingual (Spanish Speaking)

5263 CR(D) Medical Technologist I $31,963-$74,978

5002 CR Nurse Practitioner I (Acute Care) $59,507-$108,383

5003 CR Nurse Practitioner I (Adult Health) $59,507-$108,383

5004 CR Nurse Practitioner I (Community Health) $59,507$108,383

5005 CR Nurse Practitioner I (Family Health) $59,507-$108,383 5006 CR Nurse Practitioner I (Gerontology) $59,507-$108,383 5007 CR Nurse Practitioner I (Neonatology) $59,507-$108,383 5008 CR Nurse Practitioner I (Obstetrics/Gynecology) $59,507$108,383

NYS Unified Court System announces examination for court

THE WORK Under the direct supervision of a New York State Court officer-sergeant and the general supervision of the court clerk or other security supervisory personnel, New York State court officer-trainees serve a two-year traineeship during which time they are responsible for maintaining order and providing security in courtrooms, court buildings and grounds. After completion of formal training at the academy, trainees may be assigned to all trial courts and court agencies to begin the on-thejob training portion of their traineeship, which will include training

in court operations and security needs. NYS court officer-trainees are peace officers required to wear uniforms, and may be authorized to carry firearms, execute warrants, make arrests and also perform other related duties. At the end of the two-year traineeship, successful candidates will be promoted from a officer-trainee (JG-16) to a New York State court officer (JG-19). The eligible list established as a result of this examination will be used to fill positions in the Unified Court System in only Judicial Districts 1, 2, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 in Downstate New York.

QUALIFICATIONS

10 and 159 on List 104 to replace 3 provisionals in DOHMH.

LANDMARKS PRESERVATIONIST–9 eligibles between Nos. 2 and 24 on List 4121 to replace 5 provisionals at Landmarks Preservation Commission.

MAINTENANCE WORKER–6 eligibles between Nos. 71 and 345 on List 2015 to replace 4 provisionals in Department of

Citywide Administrative Services.

POLICE ADMINISTRATIVE AIDE–87 eligibles between Nos. 1 and 351 on List 3072 to replace 87 provisionals in Police Department.

PROJECT MANAGER–17 eligibles (Nos. 1-17) on List 4076 to replace 1 provisional at Housing Authority.

STATIONARY ENGINEER–1 eligible (No. 242) on List 108 to replace any of 10 provisionals in DCAS.

SUPERVISING COMPUTER SERVICE TECHNICIAN–58 eligibles between Nos. 29 and 111 on List 1178 for 1 job at Administration for Children’s Services.

PROMOTION

ASSOCIATE TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT

AGENT–21 eligibles between Nos. 307 and 333 on List 573 to replace 4 provisionals in NYPD.

PRINCIPAL ADMINISTRATIVE ASSOCIATE–2 eligibles (Nos. 2 and 4) on List 1507 for 1 job in Department for the Aging.

RESIDENT BUILDINGS SUPERINTENDENT–15 eligibles between Nos. 2 and 17 on List 4544 for any of 18 jobs at HA.

SIGNAL MAINTAINER–153 eligibles between Nos. 1 and 157 on List 3724 to replace 60 provisionals at NYC Transit.

SUPERVISING POLICE COMMUNICATIONS TECHNICIAN–9 eligibles between Nos. 89 and 97 on List 9513 to replace 7 provisionals in NYPD.

SUPERVISOR I (SOCIAL WORK)–1 eligible (No. 6) on List 522 to replace any of 2 provisionals at Human Resources Administration/Department of Social Services.

Successful must be at least 20.5 years old and possess a high school diploma or the equivalent. They must be U.S. citizens and New York State residents and possess a valid New York State driver’s license. They also must be legally eligible to carry firearms. Candidates must successfully complete four months of a paid training program at the NYS Court Officers Academy. During basic training at the NYS Court Officers Academy, performance will be carefully reviewed and evaluated. A NYS court officer-trainee who fails to meet the performance standards during academy basic training may be terminated at any time.

THE EXAM

The computer-based, multiple-choice examination will be administered by Talogy at test centers located in or convenient to Judicial Districts 1, 2, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13 in Downstate New York from Wednesday, Sept. 10 through Friday, Oct. 31. The examination time is three hours and 15 minutes.

Self-scheduling will be first come, first served and subject to availability; specific dates, times and test centers will not be guaranteed. All examination appointments must be self-scheduled at least 24 hours in advance of the scheduled examination time.

NYS Unified Court System employees who are regularly scheduled to work weekdays will be required to select among the available dates/times during the weekend of Sept. 13 and 14. Employees who are regularly scheduled to work weekends shall be granted excused leave to take the exam during work hours in accordance with the applicable collective bargaining agreement or rules of the chief judge.

If the number of applicants exceeds available seating capacity for the scheduled dates, contingency testing will be scheduled beginning Saturday, Nov. 1 and during the weeks of Nov. 3, Nov. 10 and Nov. 17. Contingency examination dates and impacted applicants will be determined at the discretion of the Office of Court Administration

If the number of applicants exceeds available seating capacity for Sept. 13 and 14, contingency testing will be scheduled on an alternate weekend. Contingency examination dates and impacted applicants will be determined at the discretion of the Office of Court Administration. Applicants must have an email address to complete the application process and to receive all correspondence regarding this examination. An application is considered successfully filed upon immediate receipt of an application id number. Applicants should add the following email address to their address books to ensure receipt of all correspondence regarding this examination: no-reply@panpowered.com.

Beginning Monday, Aug. 18, and continuing throughout the week, applicants will be emailed a link to self schedule the examination. Persons who have not received a self-scheduling link by Monday, Aug. 25 should email nycucs_support@talogy.com directly to request a duplicate. All examination appointments must be self-scheduled at least 24 hours in advance of the scheduled examination time.

Links to the announcement, FAQs and subject matter/sample questions are posted at https:/ ww2. nycourts.gov/Exampagecot2025. The application link will be found on the same page beginning March 12.

LABOR AROUND THE WORLD LABOR AROUND THE WORLD LABOR AROUND THE WORLD

Abortion policy could affect employment decisions, new poll reveals

In states with restrictive laws

BY KELCIE MOSELEY-MORRIS stateline.org

A state’s policies on reproductive issues, including abortion, are likely to affect where people decide to take a job or start a family, according to a poll released Monday, and no states with restrictive abortion policies had majority support from those polled.

The survey, commissioned by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, showed individuals in states with restricted abortion policies were concerned about abortion access and access to OBGYNs, prenatal care and fertility treatment. The sample included 10,000 responses from an online survey conducted between Aug. 27 and Sept. 1 by Morning Consult. The Center for Reproductive Rights also participated in the study, according to a release.

A strong majority of those surveyed, 61 percent, said they were familiar with the reproductive health care policies where they live, including abortion, contraception and fertility treatments.

The numbers were about the same between men and women, with slightly more men saying they weren’t too familiar.

Nationwide, states with abortion access had broad support from those surveyed for their policies. None of the 16 states with first trimester restrictions or near-total bans had majority support, with the lowest support coming from Idaho and Kentucky, which both have near-total bans.

Nearly one-third who live in states with bans said they strongly disagree with the state policy.

Worries about access to OBGYNs were highest in Arizona, Texas and Florida (57 percent, 55 percent and 59 percent, respectively), where abortion access fights have been heated for the past two years. Florida has a six-week abortion ban. Arizonans passed an abortion-rights ballot initiative in November, but the state has an ongoing shortage of OB-GYNs, according to reports, and the 1864 ban that the Arizona Supreme Court said could be enforced in April 2024 led to a chaotic scene for health care until it was repealed a month later. Texas has a near-total abortion ban, and more than 46 percent of counties across the state are considered maternity care deserts, compared to the nationwide average of 32 percent.

About 40 percent of those surveyed said a lack of OB-GYN care or low access to prenatal care and contraception would make them less likely to accept a job that required relocation to a new state.

Among adults who plan to have children, 19 percent said they relocated to another state because of their state’s abortion restrictions, or know someone who did. A little less than half of respondents, 45 percent, said they were more likely to apply to a job with reproductive health care benefits, such as support for abortion or fertility treatments, but nearly 80 percent thought employers should offer paid parental leave, flexible hours for caregiving and paid caregiving leave. A little more than half also think companies should speak out on reproductive health care issues, including partnerships with lawmakers to help protect access.

Jamila Taylor, president and CEO of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, said the survey shows workers are not willing to trade their health and autonomy for a paycheck.

“Access to reproductive health care is a fundamental component of workplace equity, and businesses can no longer afford to ignore the impact of abortion restrictions on their workforce,” Taylor said in a press release. “Our report makes it clear that companies who fail to address these needs risk losing their competitive edge. To build a resilient workforce and thriving economy, it’s up to corporate leaders and lawmakers to take decisive action and make reproductive health care a top priority.”

Firings at weather and oceans agency risk lives and economy

Former Weather Service employees decry dismissals at agency

BY SETH BORENSTEIN Associated Press

The federal weather and oceans agency touches people’s daily lives in unnoticed ways, so massive firings there will likely cause needless deaths and a big hit to America’s economy, according to the people who ran it.

The first round of firings started Feb. 27 at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a government agency that monitors the oceans, the atmosphere where storms roam and space, and puts out hundreds of “products” daily. Those products generally save lives and money, experts say.

NOAA’s 301 billion weather forecasts every year reach 96 percent of American households.

The firings are “going to affect safety of flight, safety of shipping, safety of everyday Americans,” Admiral Tim Gallaudet said. President Donald Trump appointed Gallaudet as acting NOAA chief during his last administration. “Lives are at risk for sure.”

Former NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad agreed.

“We’re getting into prime tornado time. We’re getting into planting season for the agricultural season for the bread belt,” Spinrad said. “It’s going to affect safety. It’s going to affect the economy.”

That’s because “NOAA sort of gets forgotten, until it’s very important,” said private meteorologist Ryan Maue, a conservative and a NOAA chief scientist under Trump.

“This throws sand in the gears” of an agency that is understaffed but doing “a Herculean job,” Maue said.

Elon Musk has repeatedly defended federal workforce cuts by his Department of Government Efficiency as “common sense.”

“The people voted for major government reform, and that’s what the people are going to get,” Musk said from the Oval Office this month. “That’s what democracy is all about.”

The agency creates daily weather forecasts from 122 local offices, issuing warnings for deadly tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, wildfires and floods.

Disaster and local officials use those to advise the public on how to avoid danger. Farmers use seasonal outlooks for crop advice. Pilots use aviation forecasts. Forecasts from

private weather apps on phones, on television and elsewhere are based on NOAA satellites, data and forecasts.

“That’s an amazing undertaking to monitor that. You can’t count on TV meteorologists to fill this gap and you can’t count on private meteorology,” Maue said. “You can’t count on your weather app to call you up and alert you’’ to tornadoes, severe thunderstorms and floods in your area.

In the west, dozens of NOAA meteorologists provide firefighting crews with up-to-the-minute forecasts on wind and other shifting conditions that affect fires and could mean life or death, said Elbert “Joe” Friday, a former director of NOAA’s National Weather Service. They also are key in avalanche warnings.

In the water, ships use the agency’s weather forecasts and mapping of water channels for safety, while NOAA manages fisheries worth hundreds of billions of dollars and stunning ocean sanctuaries.

‘A national disaster’

Gallaudet, who was a Navy rear admiral, said NOAA guidance on weather and shipping channels will be so hurt by the firings that America could see more accidents like when a massive container ship ran into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in 2024. It was NOAA’s quick work that

enabled the reopening of Baltimore’s economically critical port after only a couple months, Spinrad said. In Alaska, the city of Nome wants to create a deep water port, but it needs NOAA to do a channel survey first, he said.

NOAA provides the science expertise in the response to major oil spills in coastal areas, including 2010’s BP Deepwater Horizon, Spinrad said.

In space, NOAA forecasts help prevent satellites — including those belonging to Musk’s SpaceX — from colliding. The agency also watches for solar flares that can knock out parts of the electrical grid and hurt air traffic communications, officials said. NOAA owns or operates 18 satellites in orbit.

“Three years ago, SpaceX lost 40 satellites due to their ignorance of space weather implications and upper atmosphere density impacts. They immediately came to NOAA and said, ‘hey, help us out’,” Spinrad said, calling it “an object lesson there for Elon Musk himself” on the agency’s value.

The National Weather Service is worth $102 billion a year to the U.S. economy, according to a 2022 study by the American Meteorological Society and economist Jeffrey Lazo. Before the current Trump administration, NOAA had a $6.7 billion budget, including nearly $1.4 billion for the National Weather Service, one of six sub-agencies.

NOAA officials would not reveal

how many people were fired or are being let go, citing privacy. Current and past NOAA leaders and employees have given various estimates on job cuts, ranging from 580 to 1,200.

Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, said the latest figure he has is 650 terminations.

Jane Lubchenco, another former NOAA chief, said the firings “are a national disaster and a colossal waste of money.”

These are not high-paying jobs, but it’s work being done by people who love it, so cutting NOAA is like going after coins in the couch, Maue said.

“These are people who just live and breathe this work. These are the kind of people who come in on a day off because there’s a big weather event and they want to help out,” said College of the Holy Cross environmental sciences professor Keith Seitter, the former director of the American Meteorological Society. “People don’t go into meteorology because they want to get rich.”

Seitter said there will “be things that fall through the cracks where they shouldn’t,” because of the dismissals, warning “those things lead to situations that could be deadly’’ Gallaudet, appointed by Trump, called the cuts “self-defeating,” saying “I could personally never work for Trump again. I did support some of the conservative policies. I still do, but he personally as a leader, he’s despicable.”

Immigrant labor fuels economy

But Trump’s crackdown mostly ignores it

BY TIM SULLIVAN and REBECCA BOONE Associated Press

The Trump administration is touting an immigration crackdown that includes putting shackled immigrants on U.S. military planes, expanding agents’ arrests of people here illegally and abandoning programs that gave some permission to stay.

One tool that’s conspicuously absent from President Donald Trump’s efforts to reduce illegal immigration: Going after the businesses that hire workers who are in the U.S. illegally.

A nearly 30-year-old government system called E-Verify makes it easy to check if potential employees can legally work in the U.S.

The program has had high-profile backers. Project 2025, the far-right blueprint for Trump’s second term, called for it to be mandatory.

Yet it remains largely voluntary and rarely enforced. Trump’s own hotels and golf courses were slow to adopt E-Verify.

The debate over workplace enforcement is, in many ways, a reflection of America’s complex views on immigration, its economic dependence on immigrant labor and a quietly bubbling Republican divide.

“There are only so many people you can round up and deport” who are criminals or fugitives, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for reduced immigration and has close ties to the Trump administration. “To make a deep reduction in the illegal population it has to be done at least in part

through workplace enforcement.”

Trump’s order declaring a national emergency at the southern border used dark terms, describing a country in chaos due to an immigrant “invasion” He has linked illegal immigration to violent crime and claimed countries are emptying prisons, mental institutions and “insane asylums” to send dangerous people to the U.S.

Resistance from all corners

The reality is often far more prosaic. Many immigrants living here illegally are working. They’re fixing roofs and cars, putting up drywall and running hotels. They’re making sure shoppers have lettuce, milk and apples.

E-Verify, an online Department of Homeland Security system

launched in the late 1990s, can quickly confirm if someone is authorized to work in the U.S., often by using Social Security numbers.

Barely 20% of U.S. employers use it. The 1.3 million that do include Walmart, Starbucks and Home Depot.

Even its staunchest defenders acknowledge there are plenty of ways to cheat it. But most states with E-Verify mandates saw reduced numbers of immigrants working illegally, according to a 2017 study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. That, the researchers said, may also discourage more people from entering the U.S. illegally.

“You have to reduce the incentive to cross the border” by making it more difficult to work in the U.S., said Krikorian. “You have to reduce

that magnet.”

Yet over the years it has been opposed by everyone from Republican immigration hawks to Idaho dairy farmers, New York hotel owners and construction industry lobbyists.

During the first Trump administration’s budget proposals, language calling for mandatory nationwide E-Verify use was quietly dropped.

In one state legislature after another, many of them Republican dominated, occasional attempts to mandate E-Verify for all employers — or even most — have repeatedly failed. Where it has been mandated, many employers are often exempted.

When pressed, Trump administration officials say they will be going after the companies that hire people who are in the U.S. illegally, as well as the workers.

“You can count on worksite enforcement coming back,” border czar Tom Homan said in a recent interview.

So far, though, workplace raids remain very rare.

Trump, who in 2016 called for E-Verify to be required for every employer, has seemingly remained silent about the program since returning to office.

In 2019, amid reports that some workers at Trump businesses were in the U.S. illegally, Trump’s son Eric, the executive vice president of the family company, said it would “ institute E-Verify at any property not currently utilizing this system.” But the E-Verify registry shows it took years for many Trump properties

Trump Organization officials did not reply to repeated requests for comment.

to sign up.

LM Otero/AP Photo

Samuel, originally from Mexico and who wished to share only his first name, laughs as he takes a break from installing Sheetrock on the ceiling of a home under construction in Plano, Texas, in May 2022.

Krystian Kopka/NOAA

Scientists and staff from Amundsen Scott Station in Antarctica — among them researchers from the NOAA — boarded an Air National Guard C-130 for the last scheduled flight for nine months.