The CHIPS Act is one program that was doing what Trump has said he wants - bringing manufacturing back to the United States - is dying on the vine as hundreds of employees are fired.
Much as was seen in the gutting of the USAID program by essentially firing all of the employees save a few to turn off the lights when exiting, so too will Trump’s disliked CHIPS Act program get killed by default by firing all the recently hired CHIPS Act employees using the “Probationary” excuse to get rid of thousands of other government employees.
NIST, which is the government department under which CHIPS lives is expecting 500 or more firings of “probationary” people.
The vast majority of those to be terminated at NIST are associated with the CHIPS Act as they are the most recently hired with most of them being hired in the last year as Biden ramped up the CHIPS Act on his way out the door.
If there are no employees left to administer the CHIPS Act program, it is dead by default as there is no one left to certify that companies have met their requirements let alone write the checks.
By way of SemiWiki