Business

Mass Federal Firings May Imperil Pets, Cattle and Crops

Published

9 months ago

February 26, 2025

Mass Federal Firings May Imperil Pets, Cattle and Crops

Shortly after taking office for the second time, President Trump began making deep cuts to agencies and programs that play critical roles in human health, slashing funding for medical research, halting global health aid and firing scores of workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But the campaign to downsize government, which has been led by Mr. Trump and Elon Musk, has also hollowed out agencies and programs devoted to protecting plant and animal health. The recent wave of mass firings hit federal workers responding to the nation’s growing bird flu outbreak, protecting crops from damaging pests and ensuring the safety of pet food and medicine, among other critical duties.

Although the government has since rescinded some of these firings, the terminations — combined with a federal hiring freeze and buyout offers — are depleting the ranks of federal programs that are already short on employees and resources, experts said.

The damage could be long-lasting. Workers whose jobs were spared said that the upheaval had left them eyeing the exits, and graduate students said they were reconsidering careers in the federal government. The shrinking work force could also have far-reaching consequences for trade and food security and leave the nation unequipped to tackle future threats to plant and animal health, experts said.

“These really were indiscriminate firings,” said John Ternest, who lost his job at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he was preparing to conduct studies on honeybee health and crop pollination. “We don’t know what we’ve lost until it’s potentially too late.”

Plant and animal inspectors

The most recent wave of firings focused on the roughly 200,000 “probationary” employees across the federal government, who had fewer job protections because they were relatively new to their positions. (For some roles, the probationary period can be as long as three years, and it can also reset when longtime employees are promoted.)

The exact size and scope of the job losses remain unclear, and the U.S.D.A. did not answer questions about the number of workers who had been terminated or reinstated at several of its agencies.

But in an emailed statement, a U.S.D.A. spokesman said that Brooke Rollins, the new secretary of agriculture, “fully supports President Trump’s directive to optimize government operations, eliminate inefficiencies and strengthen U.S.D.A.’s ability to better serve American farmers, ranchers and the agriculture community.”

Reports suggest that the department has lost thousands of employees.

That includes roughly 400 people who worked in its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, according to one U.S.D.A. official who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation. The plant protection and quarantine program within APHIS was especially hard hit, losing more than 200 employees, including agricultural inspectors, entomologists, taxonomists and even tree climbers who surveyed for pests, the official said.

Some of the fired workers were responsible for combating invasive, plant-killing insects, such as the Asian long-horned beetle, within the nation’s borders. Others worked to ensure that agricultural products entering and exiting the country were free of pests and pathogens. Exotic fruit flies pose a particular risk to American agriculture, including the citrus and berry industries.

The terminations are already causing import delays at the nation’s ports, according to the U.S.D.A. official. Over the longer term, if agricultural pests and pathogens found their way into the country, they could infest the nation’s homegrown crops, threatening food security and reducing demand for American agricultural products abroad.

“If the United States gets a reputation for having dirty products, does that mean other countries will also, you know, step in and say, ‘Hey, we don’t want to buy your goods’?” the official said.

The firings also hit the agency’s veterinary services program, which inspects imported livestock for disease and plays a key role in the nation’s bird flu response, said Dr. Joseph Annelli, the executive vice president of the National Association of Federal Veterinarians.

The U.S.D.A. has quickly rehired some of the employees who were involved in the bird flu response, suggesting that their firings had been a mistake. But even before the recent terminations, the government was short on veterinarians, Dr. Annelli said. “There has not been adequate staffing for at least 10 years,” he said. “We need more veterinarians, not less.”

The agency was in the midst of hiring additional people to assist with the bird flu response, Dr. Annelli said, but the federal hiring freeze put that process on hold.

The workers who remain are nervous about the long-term stability of their jobs. “I’m not very optimistic,” said one current veterinary services employee, who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation and has already applied for another position outside the U.S. government.

Agricultural scientists

Roughly 800 people, including the leaders of laboratories, were also fired across the Agricultural Research Service, the in-house scientific agency at the U.S.D.A, according to a department official who was not authorized to discuss the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The firings brought a wide range of research projects to an abrupt halt and left the technicians and the students who worked in these labs in limbo.

One New York lab was in the middle of investigating a potential outbreak of late blight, a potato disease, when the lead scientist was fired, said Isako Di Tomassi, a graduate student at Cornell University who worked in the lab. Potato samples from a large, commercial farm are now locked up in the shuttered lab, “untouched and untested,” Ms. Di Tomassi said.

Scientists and statisticians working in the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center in Nebraska, which studies livestock genetics and breeding, were also terminated, including those working on research projects in food safety and salmonella testing. The firings have led to objections from Nebraskas’s Republican congressional delegation and industry groups.

“We understand and respect the federal government’s desire to cut wasteful spending, but the truth of the matter is, U.S. MARC does not fall in that category,” the Nebraska Cattlemen Association said in a statement. The work being done at the center, the statement continued, “has potential to reduce costs for the beef industry long term and improve food safety for consumers.”

Some — but not all — of the agency’s scientists were reinstated this week. Still, the mass firings could do lasting reputational damage to the agency, they said.

“I think that people that want to earnestly do science are going to be viewing and remembering these decisions and how scientists are being treated,” said one agricultural researcher who was fired and then rehired and requested anonymity to protect the job.

In interviews, several graduate students in agricultural science said that they were no longer sure whether they could build research careers in the federal government.

“My future as a scientist seems very uncertain right now,” Ms. Di Tomassi said.

“Getting a federal scientist position is a big deal,” she added. “It’s not easy to do, and all of that investment is now being let go.”

Animal health regulators

Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention primarily concerns itself with human health, the agency also aims to prevent zoonotic diseases, including by regulating the entry of animals — particularly those than can carry pathogens — into the United States.

For example, the agency does not permit dogs that have recently been in countries with a high prevalence of rabies to enter the United States unless they have been vaccinated against the disease. C.D.C. officers also examine animals at port stations, and isolate or quarantine those exposed to dangerous pathogens.

But the Trump administration recently dismissed about half of the C.D.C. employees at the agency’s 20 port health stations, leaving some stations entirely unattended.

Calls to the port station in San Juan, P.R., last week were rerouted to the station in Miami, where a C.D.C. employee who declined to be identified said that no one would be at the San Juan post “for a very long time.”

Workers were also fired from the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Veterinary Medicine. Among those affected were employees reviewing data on novel animal medicines and working to ensure that pet food and animal feed were free of contaminants.

Those teams were already short-staffed, said two fired employees, who asked not to be identified because they are appealing their terminations. They worried that the losses could slow down the approval of new animal drugs and even cause dangerous products to fall through the cracks.

“It’s a gap in the safety structure,” one of the employees said. “They’re big challenges and there’s no one else to take it on. That’s the job of government.”

Linda Qiu contributed reporting.

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Business

Fall Art Auction Quiz: Are You Smarter Than a Billionaire?

Published

3 hours ago

November 26, 2025

Press Room

Fall Art Auction Quiz: Are You Smarter Than a Billionaire?

In a single week, collectors spent a whopping $2.2 billion on art at New York’s auction houses. While that $236 million Klimt portrait made headlines, plenty of other paintings and sculptures sold for sums that might surprise you.

Can you guess which of these works sold for more?

Note: Listed sale prices include auction fees.

Image credits: “Paradise Pies (VI): Red” via Sotheby’s; “Untitled” via Christie’s; “From our side” via Christie’s; “TAGOMIZOR” via Christie’s; “Blumenwiese (Blooming Meadow)” via Sotheby’s; “Waldabhang bei Unterach am Attersee (Forest Slope in Unterach on the Attersee)” via Sotheby’s; “Cowboy Eating with Shoulder Hole” via Sotheby’s; “Untitled (Cowboy)” via Christie’s; “A Clear Unspoken Granted Magic” via Christie’s; “Sarah” via Phillips; “Modern Painting Triptych II” via Sotheby’s; “Nude with Blue Hair, State I” via Christie’s; “Abstraktes Bild” via Christie’s; “Sunflower V” via Christie’s; “Wall Relief with Bird” via Christie’s; “Hulk (Rock)” via Sotheby’s; “America” via Sotheby’s; gold by MirageC via Getty Images.

Zachary Small contributed reporting. Produced by Josephine Sedgwick.

Business

Fubo TV blasts NBCUniversal for pulling channels

Published

6 hours ago

November 26, 2025

Press Room

Fubo TV blasts NBCUniversal for pulling channels

Subscribers of sports streaming service Fubo TV have lost access to channels owned by NBCUniversal in the latest TV distribution dust-up.

Fubo blasted NBCUniversal for its stance during collapsed contract negotiations, resulting in a blackout of NBCUniversal channels just days before Thanksgiving when scores of viewers hunker down for turkey and football. NBC is set to broadcast the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the National Dog Show and Thursday night’s NFL game featuring the Cincinnati Bengals battling the Baltimore Ravens. The events also will stream on Peacock.

The blackout, which also includes Bravo, CNBC and Spanish-language Telemundo, affects Fubo’s nearly 1.6 million customers.

The dispute comes a month after NBCUniversal’s rival, Walt Disney Co., acquired the controlling stake of Fubo and folded the smaller sports-centric offering into Disney’s Hulu + Live TV. (Hulu + subscribers still have NBCUniversal channels available because they are covered by a separate distribution contract.)

Fubo customers could also miss NBC’s broadcast of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

(Eduardo Munoz Avarez / Associated Press)

In its Tuesday statement, Fubo alleged that NBCUniversal had refused to give Fubo leeway to offer just a few of its channels — rather than its entire portfolio. Fubo is looking to control costs and designed its product to be a slimmed-down version of a bulky bundle — but one with a heavy complement of sports networks.

Fubo also took issue with NBCUniversal negotiating on behalf of the cable channels that NBCUniversal plans to cast off in January as part of a corporate split.

Legacy cable channels including MS Now (formerly MSNBC), Syfy, CNBC, USA Network and Golf Channel will be form the new publicly traded company, Versant.

“Fubo offered to distribute Versant channels for one year,” Fubo said in its statement, adding that it views most of those networks as “not being worth the cost.”

“NBCU wants Fubo to sign a multi-year deal – well past the time the Versant channels will be owned by a separate company,” Fubo said. “NBCU wants Fubo subscribers to subsidize these channels.”

NBCUniversal, owned by cable and broadband giant Comcast, countered that it had offered Fubo similar terms to those contained in deals struck with other pay-TV distributors — but Fubo balked.

“Unfortunately, this is par for the course for Fubo,” NBCUniversal said. “They’ve dropped numerous networks in recent years at the expense of their customers, who continue to lose content.”

The Nov. 21 blackout came one week after Disney resolved a separate, high-profile dispute with Google’s YouTube TV. That dispute, which resulted in a two-week blackout of Disney-owned channels, including ESPN, for about 10 million YouTube TV customers, hinged on fee increases sought by Disney.

The two companies also tussled over YouTube TV’s desire to offer the ESPN streaming app to its customers at no extra cost.

They reached a compromise, and YouTube came away with authorization to provide some ESPN streaming content.

In September, YouTube TV avoided a similar blackout of NBC channels by making a deal just hours before the deadline.

Disney acquired 70% of Fubo TV in October 2025.

(Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)

Fubo pointed to NBCUniversal’s recent deals with YouTube TV and Amazon Prime Video, which allows those companies to offer NBC’s streaming app Peacock as part of their channel stores. Fubo alleged that NBC refused to give Fubo the same rights.

“Fubo is committed to bringing its subscribers a premium, competitively-priced live TV streaming experience with the content they love,” Fubo said. “That includes multiple content options, including a sports-focused service, that can be accessed directly from the Fubo app. We hope NBCU reconsiders their stance, or we’ll be forced to move forward without them.”

Business

Struggling Six Flags names new CEO. What does that mean for Knott’s and Magic Mountain?

Published

23 hours ago

November 25, 2025

Press Room

Struggling Six Flags names new CEO. What does that mean for Knott’s and Magic Mountain?

Struggling with a plummeting stock price and a decline in revenues, Six Flags Entertainment Corp. named a new CEO Monday, weeks after company officials suggested they would sell more underperforming theme parks.

Six Flags announced John Reilly, a veteran theme park operator, as its new president and CEO. He had served as an interim CEO and chief operating officer at SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment in the past.

Reilly is taking the reins of the struggling Charlotte, N.C.-based company that operates Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park and Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia.

“He’s got his work cut out for him,” said Martin Lewison, associate professor of business management for Farmingdale State College in New York, who is also a Six Flags shareholder.

Since its merger with Cedar Fair Entertainment Company last year, Six Flags has upset some parkgoers with its cost-cutting efforts, including moving to a regional management model where park presidents at Knott’s Berry Farm and Magic Mountain were laid off. At some parks, live entertainment was reduced or mostly canceled, and some seasonal events did not return this year, such as WinterFest and Tricks and Treats at California’s Great America in Santa Clara.

Lewison said his own experience has been spotty at Six Flags parks, and two issues the company will need to address are how it wants to brand itself, and whether it wants its theme parks to be family-oriented or thrill-oriented.

“The company is just sort of a mishmash of a brand right now,” Lewison said.

While the holidays can be a big driver of traffic to Southern California theme parks like Disneyland, Six Flags’ regional parks have experienced some challenges, Lewison said.

At Six Flags, revenues and earnings were down in the third quarter compared to the same period last year, and there were fewer visitors in October compared to the same month in 2024. Executives earlier this month suggested they’re taking a stronger look at closing and selling off more of its underperforming theme parks.

In an earnings call earlier this month, Brian Witherow, chief financial officer for Six Flags, said certain parks that represent 70% of the company’s earnings are outperforming, while its other parks are struggling.

Witherow said the company had invested more money in maintenance to improve the guest experience at the underperforming parks, “but did not yet achieve the commensurate uplift in profits we were targeting.”

In a pair of examples, Witherow cited a “historically well-maintained” theme park “with a loyal customer base,” where the company was able to “minimize costs without impacting consumer demand or the guest experience,” and earnings grew 14%. Then, he cited an underperforming park, where, despite significant spending to address deferred investment needs, earnings fell significantly.

“Going forward, we intend to be more nimble and strategic in allocating investment dollars, focusing only on our highest potential underperforming parks and the strongest opportunities to deliver near-term returns,” Witherow said. He declined to list which parks were underperforming.

Witherow said it’s a priority for Six Flags to narrow its focus “and shrink our capital needs.”

“We’re going to look at the parks where our returns are the greatest, where the opportunities for growth are the highest, and we’re going to focus on those parks. The other parks we’ll look to monetize and use those proceeds to reduce debt,” Witherow said.

In the third quarter, Six Flags’ underperforming parks saw attendance decline 5%, Witherow said.

The company this month permanently shuttered its Six Flags America theme park and Hurricane Harbor water park in Bowie, Md., and will put up the land for sale. In Northern California, California’s Great America is set to close in the coming years, with its final season either in 2027 or in 2032, depending on whether the company exercises an option to extend its lease by an additional five years.

Could Six Flags be considering selling either of its parks in Southern California? Not at this time, Witherow suggested.

Some of Six Flags’ parks that have high property values are in Southern California, as well as Toronto, but those are parks that “are critical to the long-term growth of the business,” Witherow said. A sale of those properties, “I think from that perspective, would not be something, at least where we sit today, that we would be interested in pursuing.”

Reilly succeeds Richard A. Zimmerman, who announced his plans in August to step down as Six Flags’ president and CEO and will leave the board on Dec. 8.

Reilly will join the company at a time when it is facing pressure from activist investors like New York-based Jana Partners to improve its operations. Last month, NFL football player Travis Kelce joined an investment coalition — which includes Jana Partners — that owns about 9% of Six Flags.

Jana has said it plans to engage with Six Flags’ board and management team to improve the company’s marketing strategy and operations, accelerate technology modernization, assess its leadership and evaluate potential acquisitions.

Zimmerman, in the earnings call, said the company has an “ongoing constructive engagement” with the investment group led by Jana Partners, which includes Kelce. He said following the announcement of the group’s interest in Six Flags, there was a surge of consumer interest, a reaction that “reinforces our confidence that Six Flags is as exciting and relevant as ever.”

“Travis Kelce, influencers of that ilk, have tremendous followings,” Zimmerman said. “Travis Kelce is somebody that’s come to our parks in many of our locations and has an affinity for them. We are going to work very closely with him and his team to make sure that we optimize that opportunity.”

For the third quarter, net revenues were $1.32 billion, down $31 million, or 2% compared with the third quarter of 2024. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization was $555 million, down by $3 million.

That came despite attendance totaling 21.1 million guests, up 1%. One warning sign was a decline in how much guests were spending inside the theme parks, with more season pass holders visiting but fewer single-day visitors.

There were more warning signs in October. For the five-week period that ended Nov. 2, there were 5.8 million guests, down 11% compared to the same five-week period last year.

Six Flags shares closed Monday at $14.44, up 7%. Its 52-week high was $49.77.