Mark Robbins gets to work at 8:15 each morning and unlocks the door to his office suite. He switches on the lights and the TV news, brews a pot of coffee and pulls out the first files of the day to review.

For the next eight hours or so, he reads through federal workplace disputes, analyzes the cases, marks them with notes and logs his legal opinions. When he’s finished, he slips the files into a cardboard box and carries them into an empty room where they will sit and wait. For nobody.

He’s at 1,520 files and counting.

Such is the lot of the last man standing in this forgotten corner of Donald Trump’s Washington. For nearly two years, while Congress has argued and the White House has delayed, Robbins has waited to be sent some colleagues to read his work and rule on the cases. No one has arrived. So he toils in vain, writing memos into the void.

Robbins is a one-man microcosm of a current strand of government dysfunction. His office isn’t a high-profile political target. No politician has publicly pledged to slash his budget. But his agency’s work has effectively been neutered through neglect. Promising to shrink the size of government, the president has been slow to fill posts and the Republican-led Congress has struggled to win approval for nominees. The combined effect isn’t always dramatic, but it’s strikingly clear when examined up close.

“It’s a series of unfortunate events,” says Robbins, who has had plenty of time to contemplate the absurdity of his situation. Still, he doesn’t blame Trump or the government for his predicament. “There’s no one thing that created this problem that could have been fixed. It was a series of things randomly thrown together to create where we are.”

Robbins is a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board, a quasi-judicial federal body designed to determine whether civil servants have been mistreated by their employers. The three members are presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed for staggered seven-year terms. After one member termed out in 2015 and a second did so in January 2017, both without replacements lined up, Robbins became the sole member and acting chairman. The board needs at least two members to decide cases.

That’s a problem for the federal workers and whistleblowers whose 1,000-plus grievances hang in the balance, stalled by the board’s inability to settle them. When Robbins’ term ends on March 1, the board probably will sit empty for the first time in its 40-year history.

It’s also a problem for Robbins. A new board, whenever it’s appointed and approved, will start from scratch. That means while new members can read Robbins’ notes, his thousand-plus decisions will simply vanish.

“There is zero chance, zero chance my votes will count,” the 59-year-old lawyer says, running his fingers over the spines leather-bound volumes lined up neatly on a shelf. Inside are the board’s published rulings. None of the opinions he’s working on will make it into one of them.

“Imagine having the last year and half of your work just … disappear,” he said.

Despite the choke of files piled up everywhere else, Robbins’ office is remarkably orderly. Three paperweights rest on stacks of papers on his desk: a stone from Babel province, a memento from his time working for the State Department in Iraq; a model of the White House, to commemorate his tenure under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush; and a medallion bearing the merit board’s seal. This job, which pays about $155,000 a year, “has been the honor of my life,” he says.

In the corner, a potted plant he rescued from a trash can outside his condo six years ago is now so tall that it’s bumping up against the ceiling, growing in circles.

He swears it’s not a metaphor.

Robbins, a Republican, was excited when Trump won the election. The president chooses two board members of his or her own party, and the Senate minority leader picks a third. Robbins assumed he’d finally be in the majority after years of serving alongside Democrats, soon able to write opinions rather than just logging dissent.

No such luck.

Trump was in office a year before he nominated two board members, a pair of Republicans, including Robbins’ replacement. A third nominee, a Democrat, was named three months later, in June.

Assuming they’d be swiftly confirmed, Robbins quickly began preparing for their arrival, leaving customized notes with comments and suggestions for the nominees based on their distinct personalities and experience on each case.

He’d at least impart a little wisdom, he thought.

But months went by and still no vote. Robbins said he was told the Democrats were refusing to confirm the two Republicans by unanimous consent, insisting instead on a full debate for each. In late September, the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs subcommittee that screens nominees told Robbins it probably would not be able to confirm the appointees before the end of the current Congress. That meant that the entire process, which typically takes several months when there are no complications, will begin again come January, with no guarantee the nominees will be the same.

Now his pile of personalized sticky notes is bound for the trash, too.

Tall, slim and bald, Robbins is an eternal optimist. He sees the futility of the piles of paper and empty offices. But he’s determined to keep the trains running, even if he’s the only one on the ride.

“It’s not like I’m sitting around on the sofa watching soap operas and eating bonbons. I’m still doing my job,” he said. “It’s only when the agency stops working that people realize what we do and the value we bring.”

“Maybe someday they’ll say, `Good old Robbins, he just kept plugging along.”’

Frustrating? Yes. But at least it makes for a good story at parties.

“When I say to people, And then my votes just disappear,' the crowd usually goesOh, no!”’ he said. “And there’s empathy, there’s real empathy.”

The board, established in 1978, is responsible for protecting 2.1 million federal employees from bias and unfair treatment in the workplace. The board handles appeals from whistleblowers and other civil servants who say they were mistreated or wrongly fired, and want to challenge an initial ruling by an administrative judge. The board also conducts independent research and writes policy papers destined for the president’s desk.

Or it used to.

Robbins is quick to point out the staffing crisis began under President Barack Obama, back when Robbins’ first colleague termed out without a replacement.

Others say it’s the Trump administration’s fault.

Trump has lagged slightly behind his predecessors in nominating political appointees. As of Nov. 19, he had nominated people for 929 positions, compared with Obama’s 984 and Bush’s 1,128 at the same point in their presidencies. Congress has acted on just 69 percent of those nominations, according to data provided by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan organization promoting government efficiency.

Max Stier, the partnership’s CEO, blames the administration, the Senate and a dysfunctional system of appointing and confirming political nominees.

“There are many different flavors of the same problem,” he said. He cited several other vacancies, including assistant secretary for South Asian affairs at the State Department, deputy secretary and undersecretary for health at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the deputy secretary at the Homeland Security Department, among others. “There is so much going on, but the underlying reality is that our basic government is suffering.”

John Palguta, former director of policy and evaluation for the merit board, called the delay “outrageous.”

“We’re setting a new standard, and it’s particularly severe and unfortunate at MSPB because of the structure of the agency. It just can’t operate. And to let it go for this long, that’s really unconscionable,” Palguta said. “The administration simply hasn’t done its job.”

Sen. James Lankford, who chairs the Senate Home Security and Government Affairs’ Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management said in a statement he understands the urgency in filling these positions.

“There are over 1,500 individuals waiting for their cases to be heard, but there are not board members in place which means the backlog cannot be addressed,” said Lankford, R-Okla.

Robbins keeps plugging away and the cases keep piling up.

“We are running out of space,” he said, shimmying between towers of boxes in a storage closet close to 6 feet tall. More boxes are stacked against the hallway wall and piled up in the clerk’s office.

“Any additional cases I work from now on are just, grains of sand on a beach.”
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Mexico’s incoming government denied a report Saturday that it planned to allow asylum seekers to wait in the country while their claims move through U.S. immigration courts, one of several options the Trump administration has been pursuing in negotiations for months. 

 

“There is no agreement of any sort between the incoming Mexican government and the U.S. government,” future Interior Minister Olga Sanchez said in a statement. 

 

Hours earlier, The Washington Post quoted her as saying that the incoming administration of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had agreed to allow migrants to stay in Mexico as a “short-term solution” while the U.S. considered their applications for asylum. Lopez Obrador will take office Dec. 1. 

 

The statement shared with The Associated Press said the future government’s principal concern related to the migrants was their well-being while in Mexico. Sanchez said the government did not plan for Mexico to become a “third safe country.”  

The Post reported Saturday that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump had won support from the Mexican president-elect’s team for a plan dubbed “Remain in Mexico.” 

The newspaper also quoted Sanchez as saying: “For now, we have agreed to this policy of Remain in Mexico.” 

 

Sanchez did not explain in the statement why the Post had quoted her as saying there had been agreement. 

 

The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

 

U.S. officials have said for months that they were working with Mexico to find solutions for what they have called a border crisis. 

 

Approximately 5,000 Central American migrants have arrived in recent days at Tijuana, just south of California, after making their way through Mexico via caravans. 

 

Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum on Friday declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city, which is struggling to accommodate the influx. Most of the migrants are camped inside a sports complex, where they face long wait times for food and bathrooms. 

 

Julieta Vences, a congresswoman with Lopez Obrador’s Morena party who is also president of Mexico’s congressional migrant affairs commission, told the AP that incoming Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard had been discussing with U.S. officials how to handle a deluge of asylum claims at the border. 

 

“They’re going to have to open the borders [for the migrants] to put in the request,” Vences said. “They will also give us dates, on what terms they will receive the [asylum] requests and in the case that they are not beneficiaries of this status, they will have to return here,” Vences said. 

 

She spoke to the AP after a visit to the crowded sports complex in Tijuana. 
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The Trump administration is downplaying the significance of a report issued Friday that included dire predictions about the impact of climate change in the U.S. The White House said the study was largely based on “the most extreme scenario” and doesn’t account for new technology and other innovations that could diminish carbon emissions and the effects of climate change.

The National Climate Assessment, the fourth edition of a congressionally mandated report on climate change, noted that disasters caused by weather are becoming more common.  The report, prepared by more than 300 researchers in 13 U.S. government departments and agencies, predicts that those events will become more common and more severe if steps aren’t taken “to avoid substantial damages to the U.S. economy, environment, and human health and well-being over the coming decades.”

 

White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters noted that work on the assessment began under the administration of former U.S. president Barack Obama and uses multiple modeling scenarios to assess the effects of climate change.  But the report issued Friday, according to Walters, relies too heavily on the worst-case-scenario.

“The report is largely based on the most extreme scenario, which contradicts long-established trends by assuming that, despite strong economic growth that would increase greenhouse gas emissions, there would be limited technology and innovation, and a rapidly expanding population,” Walters said in a statement.

She said the next climate assessment, which will be prepared over the next four years, will “provide for a more transparent and data-driven process that includes fuller information on the range of potential scenarios and outcomes.”

Walters also pointed out that, since 2005, carbon dioxide emissions related to energy production in the U.S. have declined 14 percent, while global emissions continue to rise.  

While that’s true, the U.S. remains the second largest emitter of carbon dioxide, behind only China.

The Trump administration has rolled back several environmental regulations put in place during the Obama administration and has promoted the production of fossil fuels.

 

Last year, President Trump announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris Agreement, which had been signed by nearly 200 nations to combat climate change. He argued the agreement would hurt the U.S. economy and said there is little evidence in its environmental benefit.

Trump, as well as several members of his Cabinet, have also cast doubt on the science of climate change, saying the causes of global warming are not yet settled.

White House Bureau Chief Steve Herman contributed to this report.
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Governors have a wide range of priorities they want to tackle in the coming year, from tax reform to education. Yet it’s a topic that receives less attention on the campaign trail and in their speeches that could determine their success — natural disasters.

In the last two years alone, storms and natural disasters have killed scores of people, damaged or destroyed tens of thousands of homes and cost tens of billions of dollars.

Wildfires in the West and hurricanes in the South have been especially destructive, and scientists say climate change is making this more common. As the severity escalates, governors are finding they have to make disaster planning a priority or risk the consequences of inaction defining their terms and enraging voters.

Handling disasters and emergencies was a prime topic last week when the National Governors Association held a three-day seminar in Colorado that most of the nation’s 19 governors-elect attended.

“As California’s wildfires, a spate of hurricanes, and unfortunate acts of mass violence have demonstrated, such events can occur at any time,” Scott Pattison, the nonpartisan association’s chief executive, said in a statement, “including a governor’s first day in office.”

For many Democratic governors especially, the main concern is how climate change appears to be worsening the effects of natural disasters.

In California, half of the 10 most destructive wildfires in state history have occurred since 2017, and the costliest have been in each of the past three years, according to the state firefighting agency. The state has spent $500 million from its emergency firefighting fund just since July 1, putting this wildfire season on pace to be among the costliest yet.

The state is dealing with its most destructive wildfire ever, a Northern California blaze that leveled a town of 27,000 this month, killed at least 80 people and left thousands homeless. That blaze, and another that roared through Malibu at the same time and left at least three dead, are the latest in a string of catastrophic wildfires that have put the state in what seems like a perpetual state of emergency.

Outgoing Gov. Jerry Brown has called California’s mega fires “the new abnormal” as climate change turns the state warmer and drier.

The escalating destruction prompted state lawmakers to pass a series of wildfire-related bills this year. Among other provisions, they provide millions of dollars to cut trees and brush, make it easier for property owners to clear their land and require the state’s utilities to step up their fire-prevention efforts.

During his campaign, incoming Gov. Gavin Newsom said wildfire planning would be a priority for his administration and outlined a number of steps he wants to take. Among them is a more aggressive approach to clearing trees and brush, particularly the state’s millions of dead trees.

“I’d rather see our National Guard working on those kinds of emergencies than being on the border,” Newsom told the nonprofit news organization CALmatters over the summer.

He also proposed deploying a network of infrared cameras to detect wildfires early, improving the emergency alert system and boosting funding for fire departments throughout the state.

A spokesman, Nathan Click, said Newsom is putting together a comprehensive wildfire strategy as he prepares to take office in early January. But the governor-elect also has been clear that the long-term goal must be reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

California’s fire season has been especially severe, yet other Western states also have experienced ever-intensifying wildland blazes in recent years.

In Colorado, the two most destructive wildfires in state history erupted within the last six years, killed a total of four people and destroyed more than 850 homes combined. Both are believed to be caused by humans, leading Democrat Jared Polis, Colorado’s governor-elect, to call for a public education campaign to reduce the possibility of manmade wildfires.

He also said the state should invest in programs to remove flammable debris and help communities and private landowners take steps to prevent the spread of wildfires.

Nearly 1 million people in Colorado live in areas considered to have at least some risk of a devastating fire.

Florida has been hit with two deadly and destructive hurricanes in roughly a year’s time. Hurricanes Irma last year and Michael in October caused tens of billions of dollars in damage.

Even without hurricanes, many coastal communities are dealing with flooding from high tides and storm surges. Incoming Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has already said he will work with local governments to address rising sea levels, but has been criticized by Democrats for avoiding any mention of climate change in his environmental plan.

DeSantis has said he is neither a climate change “denier” nor a “believer.” That could be a problem for identifying long-term solutions to keep coastal communities safe, said Jen Hensley, the director of state lobbying and advocacy at the Sierra Club.

She said one reason Hurricane Michael was so devastating was a lack of strong statewide coastal development standards.

“We’re going to have to change zoning rules in coastal areas,” Hensley said. “The reality is that those areas are more flood prone than they’ve ever been.”

It’s similar in Texas, which has seen widespread destruction from hurricanes and where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has been noncommittal about whether he thinks human activity is affecting the climate.

Texas has sought $12 billion from the federal government for a 60-mile coastal “spine” of concrete seawalls, floating gates and steel levees as a defense against future hurricanes and higher tides expected from climate change. That’s just a fraction of the work the state estimates need to be done over the next decade to reduce the impact of flooding.

In 2017, Hurricane Harvey left Houston underwater, killed dozens and left an estimated $125 billion in damage. Abbott named a recovery czar after the storm and wants to “future-proof” the Texas coast, but attention on the issue has faded.

Governors in New York and New Jersey pushed for changes after Superstorm Sandy devastated the region in 2012.

In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, signed a law requiring sea level rise projections to be used whenever the state considers approvals or funding for projects. Then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, pushed policies to buy homes in some flood-prone areas, although environmentalists criticized him for not addressing climate change.

Those groups cheered last year when Democrat Phil Murphy was elected to replace Christie, but they have been critical of him too since, saying he’s not taking action to address global warming.

Earlier this month, Murphy experienced the perils of falling short on the basics of emergency preparedness when an early season snowstorm hit without plows at the ready, bringing roads and the transit system to a standstill and stranding thousands of commuters.

He was hit with waves of criticism, and his transportation commissioner was forced to apologize.

Murphy said it was too simplistic to say his administration “dropped the ball.” But he added, “The buck stops with me, period.”
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