Tag: security

Social Security Administration asks for billions more dollars to do its job

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Best listening experience is on Chrome, Firefox or Safari. Subscribe to Federal Drive’s daily audio interviews on Apple Podcasts or PodcastOne. The Social Security Administration said the $ 400 million that Congress gave the agency through December is not enough to fix many of its workforce problems. To make long-term improvements, SSA said it will need the White House’s $ 14.8 billion budget request. That’s a $ 1.4 billion increase over 2022. The funding would go in part toward hiring thousands of more employees and modernizing IT. The American Federation of Government Employees…

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Federal building security agency short-staffed amid rise in threats

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Federal employees and their office buildings are facing an increase in threats at a time when the agency sworn to protect them is running into challenges to fill law enforcement vacancies. The Federal Protective Service secures 9,500 federal buildings across the country. But FPS Principal Deputy Director Kris Cline said last month that about 21% of its authorized positions remain vacant, and that filling them is a “continued challenge.” Cline said told the oversight subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee that FPS has an authorized end strength of 1,131 law enforcement…

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Is the current nomination process hurting national security?

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The nation’s national security may be taking a hit because of the length of time it takes to fill lesser-known, Senate-confirmed positions in the Defense Department, FEMA, Department of Homeland Security and other areas protecting U.S. citizens. That’s according to a new study from the Partnership for Public Service, which studying the amount of time it took to fill security-related nominations in post-9/11 America. The result is that considering the demands faced by natural disasters, global threats and other worrisome aspects of living on earth, the government is taking too…

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6 Takeaways as House Republicans Accuse Homeland Security Chief of ‘Intentional’ Border Crisis

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House Republicans pressed Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for answers Thursday as every sign appeared to point to a rising surge of illegal immigrants trying to cross the southern border.  According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, agents last month logged over 221,000 “encounters” with illegal aliens along the border, a 33% jump from February.     In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Mayorkas argued that the situation at the border is under “operational control,” as the law requires. Republicans on the committee repeatedly rejected this claim, pointing to the huge…

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Rural America’s False Sense of Security

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Every few months throughout the pandemic, Wesley Thompson, a communications consultant in Washington, D.C., has driven to Indiana with his wife and two kids to visit his parents. He wanted to escape COVID cabin fever and give his 4- and 2-year-old some room to run around, which they could do more easily in his parents’ small town. The trips have offered him a glimpse into how Americans who live between the coasts have been spending the pandemic. In the summer of 2020, some people around his parents’ hometown “would look…

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