There is an urgent need to step up our work to protect the rule of law in our country.
The latest example is our work representing a top attorney at the Department of the Interior. Our client is facing proposed termination for helping draft a memo seeking the Secretary’s approval to cede unprecedented control over a highly sensitive personnel database to untrained DOGE-affiliated individuals. That memo, which raised several serious legal and major cybersecurity concerns, is labeled “objectionable,” “subversive,” and “obstructionist” in the notice of proposed removal.
What is at stake here? The system contains detailed financial and personnel information for 53 federal agencies, including the Supreme Court, and over a quarter million federal employees. These DOGE-affiliated officials already had viewing access, enabling them to see any Interior actions processed, but wanted “full administrator rights,” which would enable them to initiate and execute personnel actions and potentially unlawfully access non-Interior employee information.
The concerns our client and the memo raised relate to the privacy rights of individuals, internal control standards, interdependency and system integrity, cybersecurity, insider threats, malicious actor concerns, fraud issues, and skill set risks. You can read our press release, the memo, the notice of proposed dismissal, and the report of the investigation here.
This is just the latest example of our full-court press to protect public employees and the rule of law in our environmental, public lands, and health agencies. Your support in this effort is greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
Tim Whitehouse
P.S. It is not too late to sign up for our webinar, DOGE and Climate Change: What’s Really Happening at EPA and NOAA and Why it Matters, this afternoon at 4 pm EST.
Going to Bat for NOAA Employees
PEER has written to the Secretary of Commerce detailing significant financial and medical harm caused by the administration’s haphazard and sloppy handling of personnel issues at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The lack of administrative diligence by NOAA and its parent agency, the Department of Commerce, has jeopardized these workers’ health insurance, unemployment insurance eligibility, and reemployment rights, among other concerns. Read More»
Getting EPA EJ Employees Back to Work
A legal complaint filed by PEER on behalf of environmental justice employees aims to reintegrate them into the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) workforce with new assignments. For the past two months, EPA staff who had been assigned to work on environmental justice issues have been on paid administrative leave with no agency access and under orders not to conduct any official business. Read more»
Maryland Clean Energy Victory
After over a decade of campaigning by groups fighting trash incinerators, the Maryland General Assembly has ended the state’s practice of providing subsidies to companies that burn trash to create electricity under Maryland’s premier climate program. Over the years, PEER has provided important data analysis, research, and reports to legislators and community groups advocating for the removal of incineration from the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard . Read More»
The Impact of Interior Law Enforcement Firings
Madison Williams, a PEER law clerk, writes that the law enforcement ranks are heavily impacted by the terminations of public lands employees in agencies such as the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Forest Service. With understaffing of law enforcement officers and rangers already a severe problem, the new wave of terminations is further exacerbating the crisis. Read More»
