Six minutes of news from around the nation.

Trump memo tells federal agencies how to conduct mass layoffs; Latinos in NM, nation urged to boycott national retailers over DEI curbs; Advocates await impacts of industrial sludge law a year later; Hearing today in CA on lawsuit to halt firings of federal workers; Push grows to save Dolly Parton's book program in Indiana.

Transcript

The Public News Service Daily Newscast, February the 27th, 2025.

I'm Mike Clifford.

The Trump administration moved forward Wednesday with plans to conduct large-scale layoffs across agencies that led its move to downsize the federal workforce.

That from CNN.

They report the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management issued a memo to agency leaders with guidance on how to conduct their reductions in force, known as RIFs.

CNN notes the memo comes as the Trump administration is conducting a "multi-pronged effort to overhaul federal operations and shed employees."

In less than six weeks, it has laid off tens of thousands of probationary workers, placed other employees on administrative leave, and offered a deferred resignation package and ordered staffers to return to the office full-time.

Next, in a nationwide movement, Latinos are being urged to boycott retail stores tomorrow that have curtailed programs promoting fair hiring practices.

The diversity, equity and inclusion framework has been a cornerstone for many large retailers for several decades.

But attacks by President Donald Trump and the GOP in general have led such giants as Walmart, Target, McDonald's and others to scale back their DEI initiatives.

San Jose State University professor Caroline Cao Chin says one person might not be able to make a huge difference, but if 20 percent of people joined Latino Freeze Day, the impact would be substantial.

"By basically telling those companies, we do not approve of what you are doing, and we will take our money and we will spend it elsewhere."

I'm Roz Brown.

And environmental advocates are waiting for results from laws passed last year that regulates the use of industrial sludge from flowing into waterways like the Chesapeake Bay.

Before the laws were passed, the state had limited regulations dealing with the handling and use of industrial sludge, often made up of leftovers from meat processing facilities, which are then used as farmland fertilizers.

Mishandling or overuse of those fertilizers would lead to the contamination of groundwater and flow into waterways.

Evan Isaacson with the Chesapeake Legal Alliance says it was even common for neighboring states with regulations on industrial sludge to transport it into Maryland for dumping.

"We had essentially become the dumping ground for industrial sludge.

It was just opportunistic business opportunity, I guess, for that industry to evade existing regulatory frameworks in their home states and send it to Maryland."

A University of Maryland study in 2023 found that more than half of industrial sludge land applied to Maryland came from other states.

The Maryland Department of Agriculture oversees the year-old regulations governing industrial sludge.

I'm Simone Perez.

The neighboring states of Pennsylvania and West Virginia currently have no regulations on the use and dumping of industrial sludge.

This is Public News Service.

The lawsuit to halt the firing of probationary federal workers gets a hearing before a district court judge in San Francisco this afternoon, even as the Trump administration readies a new round of job cuts.

A coalition of unions and non-profits is asking that thousands of federal workers be able to stay on the job while the matter is litigated.

Retired Yosemite Superintendent Don Neubacher works with the coalition to protect America's national parks.

He says civil servants deserve better treatment.

"They were told they were fired because they were bad employees.

But the evidence so far is just the opposite.

They were good employees and it was just an excuse.

So we believe it was an illegal firing and they didn't follow a lawful process."

Yesterday the Trump administration doubled down, indicating it will now seek to lay off people with civil service protections in order to cut costs.

I'm Suzanne Potter.

A dozen groups partied to the lawsuit, including the American Federation of Government Employees, Voter Vets and the United Nurses Association of California.

Next more than 14,000 incarcerated people in Washington are not able to vote.

Two bills in Olympia aim to change that.

One bill would make voting more accessible for people in jail by improving access to the voters pamphlet and voter registration forms.

Another bill would allow people in prison in Washington to vote for the first time in the state's history.

Charles Longshore is incarcerated at the Washington Correction Center for Men in Shelton.

He does advocacy work from prison and says that without the right to vote, it's not easy to get legislators' attention.

"I've helped draft a bill that's before the legislature this session and leading on several other bills.

But I find that it's difficult because you have no reason to be accountable to me."

Longshore is a Skokomish tribal member and says giving the vote to incarcerated people would help right historical wrongs against Indigenous people who were not given the full right to vote until 1965.

Data shows Native Americans are vastly overrepresented in the criminal legal system.

I'm Isabel Charlay.

Next, Indiana's new budget does not include funding for Dolly Parton's Imagination Library.

The program sends free books to children from birth to age five.

It has helped Indiana's child literacy ranking rise from 19th to 6th nationwide.

Republican Governor Mike Braun is looking for solutions and appointed First Lady Maureen Braun to work with donors and state leaders.

He says their goal is to keep the program running in all 92 counties.

"When you're engaging your wife to make sure that you find the private sector to be the main funder of stuff, because we've got a lot of other things, infrastructure, education, health care that we have to do."

Without state funding.

I'm Joe Ulari, Public News Service.