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By Lauren Rosenthal and Zahra Hirji
Days after reinstating a
group of Federal
Emergency Management Agency employees who
raised concerns about the government’s disaster
preparedness, federal officials have placed
those whistleblowers back on administrative
leave.
The move came hours
after CNN first reported the return
to work of 14 staffers who had remained on paid
leave since late August. Those workers were
awaiting the results of an internal
investigation into their participation in an
open letter that criticized President Donald
Trump’s cuts to FEMA, which sits under the Department
of Homeland Security.
Though FEMA had
recently called the employees back to work, a
DHS spokesperson said in a statement that the
workers “were wrongly and without authorization
reinstated by bureaucrats acting outside their
authority,” adding that “the unauthorized
reinstatement was swiftly corrected by senior
leadership” who returned the group to
administrative leave.
A FEMA
worker Photographer: Bing Guan/Bloomberg
“I’ve never seen a
retraction on a retraction like this,”
said David Seide, a lawyer for the
nonprofit Government Accountability Project,
which is helping some workers press
whistleblower complaints against FEMA with the
federal Office of Special Counsel. “In my
decades of experience in these spaces, I’ve
never seen anything like this.”
The reversal comes
as FEMA staff await the final recommendations of
an expert council that Trump convened to
evaluate the agency’s future. The council is
expected to approve its final report at a
meeting scheduled for Dec. 11.
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Bloomberg News to stay
up-to-date on what will happen to FEMA
under the Trump administration.
A cultural
policy councilor with Brazil's Ministry of
Culture at COP30 Photographer: Marina
Calderon/Bloomberg
Last month, tens of
thousands of people took to the city of Belem,
at the mouth of the Amazon river, for the annual
United Nations climate summit: COP30. Alongside
tense negotiations, there were indigenous
protests, daily rainstorms and even a fire at
the COP venue. But at the end of it all, what
did COP30 achieve? Bloomberg Green’s Jennifer
Dlouhy joins Akshat Rathi on Zero, to share her
takeaways.
Listen
now, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify or YouTube to
get new episodes of Zero every Thursday.
Jens
Stoltenberg, Norway's finance minister Photographer:
Simon Wohlfahrt/Bloomberg
Norway’s ruling
Labor Party is
signaling no concessions on key demands by
its two partners, the Socialist Left and the
Green Party, as talks continue on next year’s
budget with an aim to avert a cabinet crisis.
The
fossil-fuel-rich Nordic nation’s politicians are
seeking to avoid a full-blown government crisis
after so far failing to ensure support from all
of Labor’s four center-left partners for the
2026 spending plan. Prime Minister Jonas Gahr
Store has until Friday to try to win over the
holdouts, or hope they will still back him in a
confidence motion if his budget fails to pass in
parliament.
The sticking point
for the Socialist Left are Israeli holdings of
the nation’s $2.1 trillion wealth fund amid the
war in Gaza, which it wants offloaded. Green
Party leader Arild Hermstad says his group will
not vote for the current budget proposal because
it will lead to “higher CO2 emissions” — an
existential question for his party. The Green
Party has called for a halt of oil and gas
exploration and a phasing out of production by
2040.
Read the full
story on Bloomberg.com and subscribe for
unlimited access.
A fast-moving storm
has delayed flights across the US. New Yorkers
face a
slippery commute this morning and heavy
snow is due upstate and in New England.
Vietnam’s coffee crop is
expected to be 10%
higher than last season, despite bouts
of heavy rain and widespread flooding delaying
the harvest and causing $3 billion in losses.
Taiwan may restart
one of its atomic
power plants in 2028 if safety reviews
proceed smoothly, a government minister said, in
another sign the island may reverse its
anti-nuclear policy.
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