The Problem Is That Nobody Wants To Buy Them, So That Inventory Is Almost Useless For Us

Trump Plans To Revoke Legal Status Of Ukrainians Who Fled To US: Report

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is planning to revoke temporary legal status for some 240,000 Ukrainians who fled the conflict with Russia, a senior Trump official and three sources familiar with the matter said, potentially putting them on a fast-track to deportation.

The move, expected as soon as April, would be a stunning reversal of the welcome Ukrainians received under President Joe Biden’s administration.

The planned rollback of protections for Ukrainians was underway before Trump publicly feuded with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy last week. It is part of a broader Trump administration effort to strip legal status from more than 1.8 million migrants allowed to enter the U.S. under temporary humanitarian parole programs launched under the Biden administration, the sources said.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the department had no announcements at this time. The White House and Ukrainian embassy did not respond to requests for comment.

A Trump executive order issued on January 20 called for DHS to “terminate all categorical parole programs.”

The administration plans to revoke parole for about 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans as soon as this month, the Trump official and one of the sources familiar with the matter said, requesting anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Migrants stripped of their parole status could face fast-track deportation proceedings, according to an internal ICE email seen by Reuters.

In addition to the 240,000 Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion, and the 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, these programs covered more than 70,000 Afghans escaping the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

An additional 1 million migrants scheduled a time to cross at a legal border crossing via an app known as CBP One.

Thousands more had access to smaller programs, including family reunification parole for certain people in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Trump administration last month paused processing immigration-related applications for people who entered the U.S. under certain Biden parole programs – placing Ukrainian Liana Avetisian, her husband and her 14-year-old daughter, in limbo. Avetisian, who worked in real estate in Ukraine, now assembles windows while her husband works construction.

The family fled Kyiv in May 2023, eventually buying a house in the small city of DeWitt, Iowa. Their parole and work permits expire in May. They say they spent about $4,000 in filing fees to renew their parole and to try to apply for another program known as Temporary Protected Status.

Avetisian has started getting headaches as she worries about their situation, she said. “We don’t know what to do,” she said.

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/donald-trump-plans-to-revoke-legal-status-of-ukrainians-who-fled-to-us-report-7862106

Better get some boxes and put yer shanty on the market Liana.

They were studying ways to protect Utah crops. Then the federal layoffs came.

Michelle Kirchner dreamed of studying bees in the Beehive State. That’s why, after defending her doctorate in entomology and biology at North Carolina State University, she immediately packed up and moved across the country to start her role with the U.S. Department of Agriculture at the Bee Biology and Systematics Laboratory in Logan.

There, she studied how to help farmers control pests while protecting pollinating bees.

What she didn’t know was within a year, she would be one of thousands of probationary federal workers fired from their jobs. The firings are the first step in President Donald Trump and the newly created Department of Government Efficiency’s efforts to shrink what they see as an oversized government, leaving many scientists jobless and their research unfinished.

Now, Kirchner is left searching for work in a highly specialized field.

“It still hasn’t really sunk in because it was so sudden, and it kind of came out of nowhere,” she said. “This was my dream position and now I’m sitting here in Logan, Utah, for no reason.”

Now, as far as she knows, the project she contributed to is “dead in the water.” Its grant money, which could only be used to hire someone to lead the research, was tied to her role. After her firing and a hiring freeze, there’s no one left to continue the work, and the funding is only available for three more years.

Now all those who are in similar specialized fields to her are back on the job market at the same time, she said.

“Finding jobs for scientists right now,” she said, “is not as easy as going to the job tree and picking a job.”

In January, Kirchner and her colleague Nevin Cullen won a $25,000 grant through the Alfalfa Pollinator Research Initiative to further research protecting pollinators and alfalfa crops. Their proposal was chosen by growers themselves.

Cullen, who defended his doctorate in 2023 and also saw his research position as a dream come true, was hired through the lab with funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but lost his job amid the federal cuts. While the money is still available to the lab, much like in Kirchner’s situation, it’s now sitting idle because it was tied to Cullen’s position.

Rumors began to spread earlier this year that funding might be slashed, Cullen said. This, he said, was the “worst-case scenario.”

“It felt really horrible,” he said. “My supervisor actually came to my house to tell me and it was really painful. It still hurts to think about.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/they-were-studying-ways-to-protect-utah-crops-then-the-federal-layoffs-came/ar-AA1Ansek

Mass terminations have cut USDA ‘off at the knees,’ ex-employees say

Mass terminations at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are “crippling” the agency, upending federal workers’ lives and leaving farmers and rural communities without needed support, according to interviews with 15 recently fired employees stationed across the U.S.

The terminations have left employees distrustful and leery of returning to public service. “I don’t feel safe,” said Latisha Caldwell-Bullis, who served in the Army for 21 years before joining a USDA office in Oklahoma. “The whole reason I got back into the federal system was because it has job security.”

Leading up to the terminations, a feeling of unease pervaded USDA offices, said a former employee based in the Midwest who requested anonymity to protect job prospects. The employee’s agency within the USDA used to have regular town halls, but they were canceled after the “fork in the road” email — which promised federal workers a buyout — hit inboxes in late January. “Then, basically, it was crickets from our leadership,” the employee said.

As news of mass firings at other agencies circulated, USDA staffers wondered if they were next. Some cried in offices. Others coped by telling jokes.

Many received the same email late at night on Feb. 13 saying they were terminated immediately. Jacob Zortman, who sold his house in Kansas in January to move to Nevada, received his work phone on Friday, Feb. 14, only to be fired the following Tuesday, he said.

Stephanie Gaspar worked for a USDA agency that helped prevent plant, animal and insect diseases from entering the nation’s food supply. Her job was to decrease IT costs. “I and my team had already reduced tens of thousands of dollars of the budget,” she said. “It’s going to cost more in the long run because there’s not enough people to do this work.”

Gaspar, based in Florida, said she had worked hard to get her position. “This ultimately was going to be a career that would pull me out of poverty,” she said. “I’m not some rich federal worker. I’m a working mom.”

https://wisconsinwatch.org/2025/03/usda-terminations-midwest-federal-employees-fired-workers-farm-agriculture/

Small federal agency blocks DOGE employees from entering its building

Several employees of the U.S. DOGE Service, the organization overseen by Elon Musk that is tasked with slashing the size of the federal government, were blocked Wednesday afternoon from entering a small U.S. aid agency focused on African economic development.

The standoff, which lasted about an hour at the U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF) headquarters in downtown Washington, is one of the latest acts of resistance from federal employees as DOGE subordinates attempt to access data systems and federal grants.

There were two men in the building who claimed they were USADF staff and needed access to the building, but they did not have key cards. The officer asked the employees whether he should let the visitors upstairs, describing them as “very young men” with backpacks, the official said.

USADF staff said no, saying the security guard’s description sounded like the same DOGE workers who had shown up at their building before for an initial introduction. By this time, the official said, the USADF employees were aware DOGE officials were seeking to dismantle their agency, and it felt like their last chance to stop DOGE from gaining access to the system. Another USADF official with firsthand knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the nature of the meeting, confirmed the visit was intended to fire employees.

USADF is an independent agency established through the African Development Foundation Act of 1980 with a mission to support and invest directly in African-owned and African-led enterprises that improve the lives and livelihoods of people in underserved communities in Africa, according to the agency’s website.

An IAF official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution, said the firings could devastate decades of partnerships focused on boosting community development, violence prevention and strengthening democracies in countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

“It will have a ripple effect throughout the most vulnerable communities in Latin America,” one official with firsthand knowledge said, “and it might not be an immediate impact on the United States, but it will be a long-term impact in terms of … keeping these relationships strong.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/executive-leadership-and-management/small-federal-agency-blocks-doge-employees-from-entering-its-building/ar-AA1AlefX

CRE Groups Brace For ‘Collateral Damage’ As DEI Backlash Grows

Commercial real estate organizations focused on underrepresented populations are being squeezed as a growing backlash against DEI initiatives sweeps across corporate America.

From Harley-Davidson to Disney to PBS, scores of companies across the country have scaled back or erased their DEI efforts under mounting political and shareholder pressure.

In CRE, the reckoning is accelerating, driven by economic headwinds that have made DEI roles and programs some of the first on the chopping block. Industry groups are feeling the strain and, in some cases, fearing for their members.

The recent acceleration of this anti-DEI shift has left many professionals anxious and angry. Justin Ziegler, president and board chair of the LGBTQ+ Real Estate Alliance, which boasts 4,000 members, said the transgender and nonbinary members of his organization are “frankly very fearful for, ultimately, what place they’re going to have in America at this point.”

“We’re a real estate organization, but we definitely have some people that have been so affected by this that it would not surprise me if here in the near future, one of these leaders is going to need a resource to refer people who are suicidal,” he said.

Ziegler’s group has sponsors dropping out, which will curtail group spending on events such as the national convention and policy symposium.

“The president and folks around the president making these jabs at DEI make it a very convenient time for these companies to conveniently reduce the dollar spend that they have in these areas, because I think it’s become a lot more socially acceptable not to publicly support DEI programs,” he said.

CREW sponsors are also dropping out, and companies have refused to reimburse employees for membership fees this year.

https://www.bisnow.com/national/news/top-talent/dei-backlash-brings-collateral-damage-and-anxiety-to-cre-advocacy-orgs-128356

Windsor workers feel whiplash as tariff flip-flop rattles local auto industry

Jonathon Azzopardi, a manufacturer for the auto industry, needs to ship a piece of equipment from Windsor, Ont., to Detroit next week, but U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs have cast the normally straightforward process into uncertainty.

The tariffs, which came into effect Tuesday, upended decades of free trade and established customs processes by placing blanket 25-per-cent levies on most exports from Canada and Mexico. Around 2 p.m. on Wednesday, the President granted a 30-day reprieve for vehicles assembled in either country.

It gave Mr. Azzopardi – and the entire sector – more time. But it isn’t necessarily good news.

“Sometimes the uncertainty is worse than the decision,” he said.

In the neighbouring motor cities of Windsor and Detroit, the turmoil created by Mr. Trump’s on- and off-again tariff threats has eaten into profits for months and strained long-standing business relationships. It has also threatened at least 100,000 automotive jobs in Ontario.

Mr. Azzopardi is also planning to lower his prices. This would make him unprofitable, but maintaining his relationships with buyers is more important in the short term, he says.

John D’Agnolo, president of Unifor Local 200 in Windsor, where he represents 2,000 Ford workers, said the machines that his members use to make engines for Ford’s F-150 trucks take years to build. It’s absurd to think they can simply be replaced, he said. “You just can’t pick up my engine plant and move it. And by the way, we won’t allow it.”

Not everyone in the U.S. auto industry is as concerned about tariffs.

United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, which represents workers in Detroit’s auto sector, said in a press release Tuesday that tariffs were a “powerful tool” to re-establish worker rights.

“We are glad to see an American president take aggressive action on ending the free trade disaster that has dropped like a bomb on the working class,” the statement said.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/economy/article-windsor-workers-feel-whiplash-as-tariff-flip-flop-rattles-local-auto/