They've fired a bunch of government employees who work in e.g. air traffic control, inspections, etc. This is likely not a case of some hand-wringing villain at the airline declaring "haha, we're finally free of that pesky regulation, now we can skip all the safety checks!"
Rather, we're seeing "the people in charge of all the procedures" (Govt employees, not airline employees) being grossly understaffed. It's a bit like "inbox zero"; you have a list of SOPs you want to observe, and you want absolute inbox-zero for completely every single procedure, to the letter, for something like flight control, spaceflight, etc.
If you cut staff, and still demand the same throughput, then the simple reality is balls are going to get dropped in the juggling - and at worst, if you refuse to accept that you don't have staff on hand to do it, and threaten to punish people who fail to keep up the same output with less staff, people are going to start lying about it.
Rather, we're seeing "the people in charge of all the procedures" (Govt employees, not airline employees) being grossly understaffed. It's a bit like "inbox zero"; you have a list of SOPs you want to observe, and you want absolute inbox-zero for completely every single procedure, to the letter, for something like flight control, spaceflight, etc.
If you cut staff, and still demand the same throughput, then the simple reality is balls are going to get dropped in the juggling - and at worst, if you refuse to accept that you don't have staff on hand to do it, and threaten to punish people who fail to keep up the same output with less staff, people are going to start lying about it.
And that - that, is the nightmare scenario. That creates what the Russians call "Vranyo": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz59GWeTIik