Becky Halioua, a VA recreational therapist and union leader, stated that she was subject to an internal investigation for speaking to the press about Pretti's killing. She expressed concern over a fellow VA employee being murdered by the same government they work for.
The president has also on the weekend granted full pardons to dozens of allies accused of attempting to subvert the 2020 election won by Joe Biden. The four-page list released from his administration runs to more than 70 people including his former lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and former chief of staff Mark Meadows. They've all been granted full, complete and unconditional pardons for their actions in relation to the 2020 vote.
It's already been a chaotic year, said Micah Niemeier-Walsh, who works at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Niosh). She was initially fired along with most employees at the agency, but reinstated in May after a court intervened to block most of the firings. For many agencies, like the one that I am employed by, we've been effectively shut down for many months already because of the reductions in force that have already happened, and all of the attacks that we've been seeing on the federal workforce, said Niemeier-Walsh, who is also vice-president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 3840. It's become out of control, and I really hope that this shutdown is a wake-up call of how bad things have gotten.
The AFGE is the largest federal-employees union, representing approximately 820,000 workers across many agencies. This is not the first time the AFGE has called for an end to the government shutdown, but it is the first time it has backed the approved GOP avenue for getting out of the mess: a "clean CR," or a simple extension of current spending levels until more permanent appropriations measures can be worked out.
