Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe is set to testify Thursday morning before a House task force investigating the attempted assassination of President-elect Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Rowe will be questioned by a 13-member independent panel that released a report in October finding the Secret Service responsible for the “preventable” attempt on Trump’s life. Rowe is expected to tell lawmakers that disciplinary actions are being taken for the lapses that allowed 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks to get within 150 yards of Trump and shoot him in the ear during a rally in Butler on July 13. “Employees receiving proposals of discipline will be provided due process under agency policy as well as any applicable laws and regulations. But, let me be clear, there will be accountability, and that accountability is occurring,” Rowe will say, according to a copy of his prepared remarks shared with ABC. “Consistent with applicable laws and regulations, I cannot comment further on specific disciplinary actions underway or being considered.” Rowe will also say that the agency has made several major changes to securing locations, including more coordination with law enforcement partners. At the Butler rally, numerous communication errors delayed law enforcement’s response to Crooks, who had been identified as a person of interest more than an hour before he opened fire.  “My goal is to improve our mission effectiveness and rebuild public trust,” according to Rowe’s written testimony. “One of the key systemic changes was the directive to mandate a unified command in a singular location for all protective sites, something that was not done on July 13th in Butler. This co-location enhances our communications and intelligence-sharing mechanisms with state, local and federal partners to better anticipate threats and respond to them more swiftly.” Other changes implemented, according to a copy of his remarks shared with Fox News, included using more drones, ensuring radios are in order, and increasing staffing levels for agents protecting Trump. CHECK OUT THE DAILY WIRE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE Rowe’s prepared testimony says the Butler rally, where Trump was shot, supporter Corey Comperatore was killed, and two other rallygoers were injured, exposed “critical gaps” in the Secret Service’s operations and was an “abject failure.”  “July 13th was a failure of the Secret Service to adequately secure the Butler Farm Show site and protect President-elect Trump,” Rowe is expected to say. “While I cannot undo the harm that has been done, I am committed to doing everything in my power to ensure that the Secret Service never has a failure like this again.” In its report, the House panel faulted the Secret Service for failing to secure the roof from where Crooks fired at Trump and setting up a security perimeter that allowed people to get within around 150 yards of the stage where Trump was speaking without going through security screening.  Investigations by both the Senate and an independent panel formed by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have also found the Secret Service liable for the attack.

Only 6% of federal employees work from an office full-time, and a third are fully remote. And some aren’t actually working when they “work from home,” a Senate investigation found. “Washington is still operating as if it’s March 2020,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), the chair of the Senate DOGE Caucus and the report’s author, wrote. “Just three percent of the federal workforce teleworked daily prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, six percent of workers report in-person on a full-time basis, while nearly one-third are entirely remote,” the report states. Government office buildings have an occupancy rate of only 12%, yet the government spends $16 billion a year to operate them. Even the head of the General Services Administration, which manages federal real estate, works from home in Missouri. “You may be more likely to see a ghost than a bureaucrat haunting the halls of some government buildings in Washington, D.C. these days,” Ernst continued. Office buildings are so empty that the water supply at the office of the Environmental Protection Agency — which is tasked with ensuring clean drinking water — was left stagnant for so long that it developed dangerous bacteria, according to the audit. But unions have demanded that full individual workstations for each employee be maintained for the rare occasions they are used, in addition to demanding that members be allowed to work from home. Elon Musk, co-chair of the incoming Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, has signaled that federal employees should have to work from the office — and those who don’t want to can quit, resulting in a leaner government. President Joe Biden used his 2022 State of the Union to say that federal employees must return to the office, and his chief of staff repeatedly demanded that cabinet officials follow through because “there’s no substitute for face-to-face.” Yet the Biden administration signed a contract, in the waning days of his presidency, with the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) union locking them into telework through 2029. That’s despite the fact that administration just completed a $120 million office renovation on a massive SSA headquarters that is 91% unused. One SSA employee ran a personal home inspection business for three years while supposedly doing his job from home, having his mother occasionally send emails from his computer “Apparently, the president of a public employees union, not the President of the United States, is currently deciding personnel policy for the U.S government,” Ernst wrote. Federal employees get paid more when their offices are in high cost-of-living areas. But at some agencies, up to 80% of teleworking employees now live in lower cost-of-living areas, while still collecting the higher pay. Some agency heads have told Congress that they have implemented policies requiring employees to come to work a few days per pay period, but reports from the ground suggest that’s not actually enforced. More than 90% of Department of Housing and Urban Development employees work from home and are not required to come to the office more than once a week. One HUD employee — a former union president — allegedly got a DUI while supposedly working from home. Remote work enabled another woman to hold two six-figure government jobs at the same time, with each employer thinking she was working full-time. The Patent and Trade Office considers itself a pioneer in teleworking, having widely done so since the 1990s. But in one nine-month period, it paid at least $8.8 million in hourly wages that “teleworking” employees didn’t actually work, its inspector general found. The federal government doesn’t have widespread systems monitoring whether employees log in to their computers, or from where, each day, Ernst said. When the Department of Health and Human Services did look at employees’ computer logins, it found that up to 30% of “teleworkers” on any given day were not actually working during the COVID pandemic, when the health department was presumably needed. The VA’s website advertises to prospective employees: “At VA, you can break away from the traditional 9 to 5, 40-hour workweek without sacrificing the opportunities and benefits that come with job security.” Despite an epidemic of veteran suicides, one-third of calls to a mental health hotline for veterans went unanswered in Atlanta, with “no sense of urgency.” Therapists didn’t show up for appointments with veterans, while the Veterans Affairs manager responsible for scheduling the appointments posted a photo online showing he was “working” from a bubble bath. The report said that only two of 76 local offices actually picked up the phone at the IRS, whose inspector general said “maximizing telework in response to the pandemic … may have contributed to declines in productivity.” The Biden administration has also made a massive number of new hires at the IRS, even though it’s not clear the existing employees are working to their potential. Ernst said, “If bureaucrats don’t want to return to work, make their wish come true.” She proposed that the government be required to sell off any real estate that is not being fully used, and that agencies should also be relocated across the country to lower-cost areas that have a connection to the work being done—with the Department of Agriculture, for example, being in farm country. The Strategic Withdrawal of Agencies for Meaningful Placement (SWAMP) Act, and several other pieces of proposed legislation, would do that.

Uncover the untold story of three wise women whose faith shaped the Christmas narrative.

A post shared on social media purportedly shows a headline published by the Associated Press about literacy that misspelled Mississippi. Verdict: False There is no evidence of this article being published by the Associated Press. Fact Check: Sheldon “Timothy” Herrington Jr. has been charged with the murder Jimmy “Jay” Lee, who was last seen in 2022 […]

What a clown

An image shared on Facebook claims to show a cover from The Economist of President-elect Donald Trump and Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. Verdict: False The Economist did not publish any such cover. Fact Check: Social media users are claiming to show a published cover of The Economist that warns of “Apocalypse” with Putin and Trump in […]

'Federal employees are on the beach and in bubble baths'

Formed in Los Angeles in 1964, The Byrds are one of the most influential bands in rock history, blending folk music with rock and achieving massive commercial and critical success. Over their career, The Byrds released 12 studio albums, with hits such as “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and “Eight Miles High.” The group underwent numerous lineup changes, with more than a dozen musicians joining and leaving the band over the years. Despite their disbandment in 1973, their legacy endures, with the band being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 and leaving a profound The post Complete List Of The Byrds Band Members appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

A pregnant motorist was recently saved from plunging into a lake when her brakes failed. Shortly after 2 a.m. on Monday, 911 received a call from a distressed woman saying her car would not stop. Moving at approximately 30 miles an hour, Williamson County Sheriff’s Office deputies eventually reached her on Old Route 13 near […] The post Missouri Deputies Save Pregnant Driver Whose Runaway Car Was Heading Straight for a Lake appeared first on Good News Network.

Books post-apocalyptic fiction Five SF Stories About Rebuilding After a Cataclysmic Event Rising from the ashes of civilization, determined to build a new world. By James Davis Nicoll | Published on December 5, 2024 Image Credit: NASA/Don Davis Comment 1 Share New Share Image Credit: NASA/Don Davis Tiring for a brief moment of science fiction and fantasy’s endless calamities, averted and otherwise, I recently turned for solace to non-fiction. Specifically, the text I fished out of my teetering Mount Tsundoku1 was Riley Black’s 2022 The Last Days of the Dinosaurs. I see some skeptical faces out there. How can a book about a global-scale apocalypse be in any sense heartening2? The answer is simple. The Last Days of the Dinosaurs’ subtitle reads “An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World.” The cataclysmic end of the Mesozoic is only the beginning. Having documented the demise of the old order, Black leads the reader through the early stages of the recovery, from the very early days when opportunistic survivors dominated, to the era a million years after impact, when the ecologies that dominate our world began to take shape. The clear moral here is that a chapter ended, but the story itself continued. Of course, I could just as well have turned to science fiction for that moral. Exploring the worlds that rise out of the ruins of the previous order is a popular pastime in science fiction. Consider these five works. “By the Waters of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benét (1937) (Collected in Cities of Wonder) The lands to the north, the west, and the south are treasured hunting grounds to John’s people. To the east, the Great Burning left only the Dead Places, which are taboo to all save the priests who retrieve metal from the cursed lands. The demon-haunted Place of the Gods is forbidden to all, even priests. The son of a priest and a future priest himself, John is well aware of the law. Nevertheless, something draws John towards the Place of the Gods. There he discovers the true nature of the Place of the Gods, and perhaps, just perhaps, takes the first step back towards civilization3. This short tale may seem entirely conventional save for two details related to the date it was published. First, this story helped establish the conventions of the after-the-end narrative. Second, while many details might lead readers to the conclusion that the Great Burning was a nuclear war, the story pre-dates the first atom bomb by eight years. Second Ending by James White (1961) World War Three killed nine out of ten people, but enough infrastructure survived to support reliable hibernation. This is good news for terminally ill Ross. He can be placed into suspended animation until a cure is found for his disease. The results are a mixed success. Ross wakes, now healthy, to discover that humans have, during his long slumber, not only annihilated themselves but almost all life on Earth. Fortune smiles on Ross. First, life may be (mostly) dead but there is an army of robots to carry out his orders. Second, thanks to the upturned cuffs of the clothes he wore on his way to cold sleep, a few seeds survived the apocalypse. Third, thanks to suspended animation, Ross has all the time he needs to oversee Earth’s terraforming… although he might be surprised to learn how long that will take. For the most part, this short novel is a tribute to what one human can accomplish, given only determination, knowledge, and a vast army of relentlessly obedient, highly advanced robots. That said, Second Ending may feature the longest timescale needed for terraforming ever featured in a science fiction novel. As the Curtain Falls by Rob Chilson (1974) Humanity triumphed during the Dawn Age, conquering the stars themselves. That was a very long time ago, longer than any person living on Earth can imagine. A billion years is long enough for uncounted civilizations to rise and fall, for the oceans to vanish, for history to become myth and then forgotten. Nevertheless, time has not erased everything. Humans survive, if in fewer numbers than in the past. Nor is the Dawn Age entirely erased. Trebor of Amballa hopes that among its relics is one that will let him bend a dying Earth to his will. A cynic might speculate that the course Trebor takes towards his destiny is less driven by pragmatism and more by Chilson’s desire to show off his vivid worldbuilding. Earth in a billion years is a very alien world, where materials like plastic and fiberglass have been incorporated into everyday biochemistry. The Breaking of Northwall by Paul O. Williams (1981) A thousand years before, the Great Fire erased civilization. Only a few widely scattered survivors were spared. After ten centuries, a few communities, Pelbar being one, have clawed their way back to town-sized city-states. Between them, pugnacious nomads make travel ill-advised. Jestak was the only survivor to return from an ill-fated exploratory mission. His silence about what befell his companions is suspicious. Jestak is silent because he believes conservative Pelbar does not want to hear what he learned. Once, a single great nation dominated continent. Perhaps it can be united again! And just perhaps, Jestak is the person to set that process in motion… This novel and the series of which it is a part are a celebration of E Pluribus Unum. It’s also an exploration of the consequences of founders being drawn from tiny groups. Pelbar seems to have been founded by a particular sort of academic, while one of the nomad tribes is almost certainly descended from feral boy scouts. Fallen by Melissa Scott (2023) Artificial Intelligences were supposed to provide the Ancestors with boundless leisure and wealth. Instead, the AIs rebelled. The AI were ultimately defeated, the survivors exiled to another dimension known as the “possible.” This victory did not come soon enough to save civilization. The Successors believe salvaged Ancestor relics can supercharge progress. The Newfounders believe the inherent risks outweigh any possible benefits. Starfarer Nic’s successful use of an ancient artifact to ply her trade makes her proof of the Successor creed. Her upcoming attempt to save a doomed city may be evidence that the Newfounders are right. Generally speaking, in science fiction, yay progress people are correct while technophobes are wrong. In Fallen’s case, readers familiar with Finders, the other book in the Firstborn, Lastborn space opera series, may not be confident that this rule of thumb is correct this time. Although published first, Finders is set later, after someone crashes civilization again. Is Nic that someone? Read and find out. SF authors love writing stories about people crawling from the ruins almost as much as they love writing stories about people creating those ruins in the first place. Such up-from-disaster works abound. No doubt I missed some of your favorites. Feel free to tell us about them in comments below.[end-mark] Yes, I do think about Ascendance of a Bookworm every time I look at a well-stocked and (I hope) solidly built bookcase. ︎Leaving aside people who really hate dinosaurs for some reason, such as resenting the way archosaurs displaced therapsids following the End Permian. ︎Whether that’s a good thing depends on how optimistic you are about humans not repeating the mistakes of the past. ︎The post Five SF Stories About Rebuilding After a Cataclysmic Event appeared first on Reactor.