'You're fired': The people Trump has sacked since taking office
President Donald Trump took over the White House less than a month ago, and in keeping with his reality television show catchphrase from The Apprentice - "You're Fired" - he has already removed more than 200 employees.
Some amount of turnover is typical for a new administration, but Trump has made massive changes during his first weeks in office. He offered buyouts to millions of government workers and put a stop to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes.
On Friday, Trump fired the nation's top record keeper, US Archivist Colleen Shogan.
Later that night, he pledged to fire board of trustees members for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts - and to name himself as chairman.
Here's a look at some of the major dismissals during Trump's first few weeks in office.
Trump's new Republican administration began with a splash when the White House began offering nearly all of the more than 2 million federal employees offers to resign, part of Trump's efforts to slash the size of the federal government.
A US judge temporarily paused the plan, which had offered federal workers eight months of pay to quit by 6 February. The White House says more than 40,000 employees already accepted the offer.
Trump has also targeted specific government officials, firing Democratic Federal Elections Committee (FEC) chair Ellen Weintraub, according to a letter she shared online. Weintraub alleges her firing was not legal.
The FEC enforces campaign finance laws and oversees federal elections.
The president also dismissed Gwynne Wilcox, the first black woman to serve on the National Labor Relations Board, who is now suing the administration.
Trump's former appointees have been dismissed too.
"Jose Andres from the President's Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, Mark Milley from the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, Brian Hook from the Wilson Center for Scholars, and Keisha Lance Bottoms from the Presidents Export Council — YOU'RE FIRED!" Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
Brian Hook, a top envoy to Iran during Trump's first term, was fired.
General Mark Milley, whom Trump named as Joint Chiefs of Staff during his first administration, was also told he is no longer needed.
The Pentagon revoked the security detail and clearance for Gen Milley, who has been critical of Trump in the past.
In the hours after Trump's second inauguration, Trump's officials also removed a portrait of Gen Milley from the Pentagon.
During Trump's time on the campaign trail, he pledged to terminate DEI programmes.
DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programmes aim to promote participation in workplaces by people from a range of backgrounds.
Their backers say they address historical or ongoing discrimination and underrepresentation of certain groups, including racial minorities, but critics argue such programmes can themselves be discriminatory.
Trump aimed to fulfill his election promise against DEI on his second day in office, telling federal agencies to terminate all staff working on those projects.
The Trump administration emailed thousands of federal employees, ordering them to report any efforts to "disguise" diversity initiatives in their agencies or face "adverse consequences".
The Justice Department said last month that it had fired several career prosecutors who were involved in criminal investigations into the president. Trump was charged in two federal cases, which were later dismissed when he won the presidential election.
The Justice Department told US media that the move to fire the prosecutors was "consistent with the mission of ending the weaponization of government", another one of Trump's campaign pledges.
The Trump administration also fired eight senior FBI officials involved in investigating the 6 January Capitol riots, according to a memo written by Emil Bove, a former defense lawyer for Trump who now works for the Justice Department.
The administration has asked the FBI to compile a list of all the agents involved in those 6 January probes, a list a US judge has ordered Trump's team to keep confidential.
Trump has also fired at least a dozen inspectors general across several federal agencies, including the departments of defence, energy and state. The role of inspector general was created to provide a check on governmental abuses of power.
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Associated Press
12 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Opioid settlement plan allows millions to be spent on purposes other than the public health crisis
In the fallout of over 9,000 Mississippians dying of overdoses since 2000, lawyers and lawmakers have set up a plan to distribute the hundreds of millions of dollars from corporations that catalyzed the crisis. But public health advocates and Mississippians closest to the public health catastrophe worry the setup could enable these dollars to be spent on purposes other than ending the overdose epidemic. Mississippi is expected to receive $370 million from pharmaceutical companies that profited while people struggled with addiction. That payout is set to be split between the state and local governments, with 85%, or about $315 million, being controlled by the Legislature. For years after the state attorney general's office helped finalize the first settlements in 2021, it was unclear how the state would distribute its share and how much would be used to prevent the crisis from persisting. State senators and representatives took a major step toward answering these questions earlier this year. They nearly unanimously passed Senate Bill 2767, a law that outlines a general framework for how about $259 million of the funds will be distributed. A 15-person advisory council — made up of representatives for state government agencies, elected officials and law enforcement officials — will develop a grant application process for organizations focused on addressing the opioid addiction crisis. After evaluating the applications and making a list of which grants should be funded, the Legislature will decide whether to approve or deny each of the council's recommendations. The state lawmakers can spend the remaining $56 million they control for any purpose — related or unrelated to addressing addiction. House Speaker Jason White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who wield massive power over lawmakers and how state funds are spent, did not respond to questions from Mississippi Today about their priorities for the funds. Sen. Nicole Boyd, a Republican from Oxford and the bill's lead sponsor, said she and other senators borrowed some ideas from surrounding states to determine how these funds could best prevent more fallout from the opioid crisis. 'It involves everything, from child welfare services to the judicial system to medical care to mental health services,' she said. 'It is a crisis that has affected every aspect of society, and we needed a comprehensive group of people making those recommendations.' However, the bill leaves some questions unanswered, like how the application process will work, when it will open to the public and how grants will be evaluated. Public health advocates and Mississippians impacted by addiction expressed concern about the advisory council's makeup, the $56 million carveout for expenses unrelated to the opioid crisis and the Legislature's final decision-making power. They said those provisions could cause some of the corporate defendants' dollars to be spent on issues other than addressing and preventing overdoses. Jane Clair Tyner, a Hattiesburg resident, lost her 23-year-old son Asa Henderson in 2019 after he struggled for years with substance use disorder. Until last month, through her former job with the Mississippi overdose prevention nonprofit End It For Good, she worked to ensure that fewer parents have to go through the pain her family experienced. She said the only ways these state settlement dollars should be spent are on improving Mississippi public health and keeping people who are at risk of overdosing safe. 'That's what it should go towards, but not to the Legislature,' she said. 'This is not a rainy day slush fund.' An evolving plan It wasn't always the plan for the Legislature to control so much of the settlement dollars. In 2021, when Mississippi and other states were in the midst of negotiating settlements, State Attorney General Lynn Fitch published an agreement between the state and local governments that would send only 15% to the Legislature's general fund. The agreement said that the bulk of the money – 70% – would be sent to the University of Mississippi Medical Center to build a new addiction medicine institute. But Mississippi law says the Legislature is the ultimate decision maker for how this type of state settlement money gets spent, according to Fitch's Chief of Staff Michelle Williams. So lawmakers passed their bill to change the plan. The Legislature changed the arrangement to make sure the money goes to where the state's most pressing addiction needs are, said Boyd. The advisory council, which will be supplemented by at least 22 additional nonvoting members, is a good way to have those needs captured, she said. As for the Legislature having final approval power, Boyd said that and other provisions were put into the bill to keep some power with lawmakers if the council becomes ineffective or political. It's the highest percentage of any state's opioid settlement share that will be controlled by a Legislature, according to the Vital Strategies Overdose Prevention Program and state guides. Dr. Caleb Alexander, an epidemiology professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, served as one of the plaintiffs' expert witnesses for some of the opioid lawsuits. Alexander has also helped U.S. cities and counties develop blueprints for how to use the settlements to quell their opioid crises. He said using the money on a variety of prevention, treatment and recovery strategies, rather than one big project, is likely a better way to save lives and prevent more addiction. But having the Legislature, rather than an apolitical body of addiction experts, play such a large role is not the setup he would suggest. 'I would have some concerns that it may gum things up,' he said. Additionally, Alexander said creating ways for funds to not be used to address the opioid epidemic, as the 2025 bill does, is 'a shame.' While the settlement agreements say that 70% of the funds must be spent on addressing addiction, there is nothing that prevents all the money from being used for the crisis, and most statesare doing that. He said the settlements define a wide variety of uses as addressing the epidemic — from first responder training to medication research and development — and he doesn't see a scenario where it makes sense to spend the money on other uses. 'The costs of abatement far outweigh the available funds for every city or county that I've examined,' he said. Boyd said she believes her colleagues in the House and Senate are all motivated to use this money to address addiction as a mental health condition. She said the new bill categorizes some funds as 'nonabatement' to free them up for ways to address addiction that may not fit neatly into the settlements' list of uses. The attorney general's original plan was the first to categorize a percentage of the funds as not needing to be used to stop the opioid crisis. Williams said it was written that way to match the terms of the national settlement agreements, although the settlement for the largest payout says spending on purposes other than addressing the opioid crisis is 'disfavored by the parties.' She said Fitch would love to see all the funds be spent on addiction response and prevention, like the One Pill Can Kill campaign the office runs. 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14 minutes ago
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