Horizon Cutting-rooms links for Friday, 4 April 2025

This week, the Horizon reported on the second wave or buyout offers rolling out to feds, Mitre layoffs, the new mass mod (#25) GSA is rolling out to Schedules, and an end-in-sight to DOGE?

Your rather late links follow.

“IRS will bring fired probationary employees back to work by mid-April,” Federal News Network

“Acting IRS Commissioner Melanie Krause said in a call Wednesday that the agency will give these employees the option to return to their jobs by April 14 — the day before the tax filing season deadline — according to IRS employees familiar with the call. The IRS also sent an email Wednesday afternoon, notifying the approximately 7,000 probationary employees it recently fired.”

“The agency fired thousands of probationary employees in February. But federal judges, in two separate rulings,  ordered the Treasury Department and several other agencies to rehire probationary employees — on the grounds that [OPM] unlawfully coordinated these firings governmentwide. Last month, U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup in California ordered six agencies, including the Treasury Department, to immediately reinstate probationary employees fired en masse in mid-February. On Tuesday,  U.S. District Court Judge James Bredar in Maryland issued a preliminary injunction, mandating 17 agencies rehire probationary employees living or working in 19 states and the District of Columbia.”

“Atlantic Union Bank acquisition of Sandy Spring closes ahead of schedule,” Washington Business Journal

"Despite some of the challenges facing the Greater Washington economy — a local recession appears increasingly likely as the Trump administration continues its efforts to drastically shrink the federal government — Atlantic Union CEO John Asbury remains bullish on the region in the long-term. Thanks to the presence of the Defense Department and the major intelligence agencies, the D.C. region is home to the nation's largest cluster of defense technology and cybersecurity firms, and that won't change even as President Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency move to scale back or even eliminate government functions.

“’Yes, there'll be fewer government workers. Yes, there'll be some impacts on government contractors,’ Asbury said in an interview Tuesday. But ‘this isn't Detroit in 1980.’”

“American Airlines Freezes Flight Attendant Hiring — The Travel Recession Just Got Real,” View from the Wing

“The U.S. economy appears to be slowing. And airlines are especially vulnerable. Businesses cut back on travel spending. Consumers see most leisure travel as discretionary. There’s been some pullback in airline schedules, and some lower fares in the market. Now, according to aviation watchdog JonNYC, it appears that American Airlines has slowed its onboarding of flight attendants.”

“It’s truly incredible to watch the U.S. self-destruct its growth trajectory in real time, in ways that are obvious to nearly all observers, and to do so willingly.”

“Exclusive | Zuckerberg Lobbies Trump to Avoid Meta Antitrust Tria,” Wall Street Journal

“Meta and its representatives have met with the president and his senior advisers ahead of an April 14 Federal Trade Commission trial that could force the company to unwind its acquisition of the messaging platform WhatsApp and image-sharing app Instagram. The terms of a potential settlement weren’t immediately clear.”

“The FTC suit alleges Facebook ‘is illegally maintaining its personal social networking monopoly through a years-long course of anticompetitive conduct.’ The complaint said Facebook put together a deliberate strategy to “eliminate threats to its monopoly.”