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Axios
02-06-2025
- Politics
- Axios
Critics warn of loyalty test in new White House hiring guidelines
New White House hiring guidelines sent out to federal agencies last week include what looks like a presidential loyalty test, say current and former federal employees and Trump administration critics. Why it matters: Meant to serve as guidelines to focus hiring on merit, the memo is the latest move from the Trump administration to politicize the civil service, eroding, more than a century of law and tradition meant to insulate career employees from politics, critics say. Where it stands: Candidates for civil service jobs — including janitors, nurses, surgeons, engineers, lawyers and economists — are to be asked four questions on their level of patriotism and support for the president's policies. They are to answer in essay form, at a maximum of 200 words, and certify that they did not use help from artificial intelligence. How it works:"How would you help advance the President's Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role?" reads the third question, which is garnering a lot of attention. It continues: "Identify one or two relevant Executive Orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired." Zoom out: These questions have nothing to do with a candidate's merit or skills, says Jeri Buchholz, a former chief human capital officer who led HR at NASA and ran HR at other federal agencies for decades. "When you're doing hiring, traditionally by law, you have to focus on the knowledge, skills and abilities required for the position," she says. The questions "are philosophical. They're not even aptitude related. And I'm very unclear how you score that." Dealing with these questions could slow the hiring process, running counter to the stated intent of the guidelines to speed it up, Buchholz says. Taken together these plans "will make it more difficult to hire, not less," a current federal HR official told Government Executive. "A merit-based civil service that took generations to build is being dismantled via memo," writes Stanford University political scientist Adam Bonica in a Substack post on Sunday. The other side: An official from the Office of Personnel Management defended the questions as legal and within the bounds of presidential authority. " The President has the power of superintendence over the Executive Branch and clear statutory authority to ask these questions of prospective employees. He is not imposing a loyalty test by doing so," they say. The law requires those who work for agencies to act consistently with the president's lawful executive orders and policy priorities, they say, making it reasonable to ask for examples that candidates are excited about. Agencies will decide whether and how to use the questions. The big picture: The White House has already fired or pushed out more than 100,000 federal workers, chasing away a lot of talent from the government. Now it looks like they'll be replacing those folks with partisans, says Max Stier, president of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. "They're emptying the shelves of the existing nonpartisan expert civil servants, and they're restocking with the loyalists," he says. The bottom line: Trump bristled at the pushback he received from "deep-state" federal employees in his first term, and a focus this term is ensuring that does not happen again.
New York Times
05-03-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Veterans Affairs Department Plans to Eliminate More Than 80,000 Workers
The Department of Veterans Affairs is planning to reduce its work force by more than 80,000 people, according to a memo seen by The New York Times outlining part of President Trump's escalating efforts to slash the federal bureaucracy. The memo, which was first reported by the trade publication Government Executive, calls for the department's work force to go from more than 482,000 workers to 399,957. Some of those cuts could be made by offering early retirement or severance payments, but earlier efforts to entice employees to quit their jobs voluntarily fell short of the stated goal of the Trump administration to drastically reduce the size of the federal work force. The Department of Veterans Affairs did not respond to requests for comment. Doug Collins, who leads the department, previously denied that services or benefits would be cut under the Trump administration. The work force reductions would be a major escalation of the downsizing that has already occurred at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which provides health care for military veterans. The Trump administration had already fired more than 2,400 employees at the department — cuts that have led to political pushback from Democrats and even some Republicans. Democrats denounced the move, noting that aggressive cuts at the department had already impacted some services for veterans and that a law signed by President Biden had significantly expanded the veterans benefits system, requiring more staff. Senator Richard Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Veterans' Affairs Committee, described the plan as a 'shameful betrayal,' accusing the Trump administration of 'starving' the V.A.'s ability to meet demand to justify privatizing the department. In addition to its primary mission of providing veterans care and serving as the nation's backup health care system, the department also oversees some medical research and manages veterans benefits programs — like pensions, banking, home loans, insurance, job training and funding for college degrees. The department also manages the nation's hallowed military cemeteries and investigates fraud in the veterans benefits system. Each of those programs and the department's sprawling health care system employs administrators as well as physicians, nurses, therapists, pharmacists, technicians, clerks, accountants, cemetery groundskeepers and case workers. It is unclear where the cuts will come from and which programs would be most impacted by the Trump administration order. The department has not yet started an agencywide analysis of the work force to determine whose job should be eliminated, according to the memo, and will have to submit a plan detailing when and where cuts should occur. Mr. Collins, the secretary of veterans affairs, said last month that 300,000 employees — including operators of the Veteran Crisis Line — had been labeled 'mission critical' to 'ensure uninterrupted services.' If that designation remains, the 80,000 cuts would have to come from a pool of about 182,000 workers — eliminating about 45 percent of the noncritical work force at the department.
The Independent
05-03-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Trump administration could reportedly fire 80,000 from Veterans Affairs
The Trump administration is looking to roll back staffing at the department charged with caring for American veterans to lower levels that were in place during Donald Trump's first term by firing as many as 80,000 workers who were hired as part of a Biden administration initiative to improve care and cover veterans exposed to burn pits and toxic substances under a 2022 law. The plan is laid out in a memorandum, first reported on by Government Executive, which came from VA chief of staff Christopher Syrek and calls to reduce the number of employees on payroll to 2019 levels. It instructs top-level staff to prepare for an agency-wide reorganization in August to "resize and tailor the workforce to the mission and revised structure." The memorandum also calls for agency officials to work with the White House's Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency to "move out aggressively, while taking a pragmatic and disciplined approach" to meeting objectives laid out by the administration, which has started a concerted effort to reduce the number of people on federal payrolls seemingly without regard to what is needed for agencies to carry out their missions. In public social media posts, Musk, the world's wealthiest man and a prominent Trump campaign donor, has alluded to presidential election results in the District of Columbia — a heavily Democratic city that has never given its' electoral votes to a Republican candidate — as justification for slashing the federal workforce. Veterans have already been speaking out against the cuts at the VA, which so far had included a few thousand employees and hundreds of contracts. More than 25% of the VA's workforce are veterans themselves. In Congress, Democrats have decried the cuts at the VA and other agencies, while Republicans have so far watched with caution the Trump administration's changes. Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate committee that oversees veteran's affairs, said in a statement that the Trump administration "has launched an all-out assault" against progress the VA has made in expanding its services as the number of covered veterans grows and includes those impacted by toxic burn pits. "Their plan prioritizes private sector profits over veterans' care, balancing the budget on the backs of those who served. It's a shameful betrayal, and veterans will pay the price for their unforgivable corruption, incompetence, and immorality," he said.
Axios
03-03-2025
- Business
- Axios
Federal workers get another "what did you do" email, without Musk threat
Federal workers reportedly got another email Friday night asking them to document their weekly activities — though so far this time, there's been no explicit threat from Elon Musk they'll lose their jobs if they don't reply. Why it matters: The Musk-led campaign to slash the federal workforce is accelerating, and the emails may end up being another way to justify cutting thousands of jobs. Catch up quick: NPR and Government Executive reported the new emails went out late Friday night, asking workers to send five bullet points documenting their activities by 11:59 p.m. ET Monday night. The emails do not mention any consequences for failing to respond. "The President has made it clear that this is mandatory for the executive branch," Musk posted on X Saturday morning. Flashback: A week ago, federal workers got a similar email, with a warning from Musk posted to X that failing to respond would be considered a resignation. The White House later clarified that responses were actually entirely voluntary, and many federal agencies told their employees not to answer. About half the federal workforce ultimately responded. Unions representing large chunks of that workforce sued, alleging the emails were illegal and that the Office of Personnel Management didn't have the authority to fire anyone who didn't answer. President Trump later said those who didn't answer were "on the bubble." Musk, for his part, described the email as a test to see if people were actually alive and working. What we're watching: How agencies actually respond this time, and whether they order their employees to comply or not. The emails may have a different urgency now, given White House directives to agencies this week to prepare large-scale layoffs by March 13.
Yahoo
25-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
It's Taking Judges An Awfully Long Time To Get To The Bottom Of Who's Running DOGE
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM's Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version. The Trump White House won't say exactly, the Trump Justice Department professes not to know, and so far federal judges have not been able to obtain an answer to the most basic question: Who is the administrator of Elon Musk's DOGE? The judge to confront the question most directly has been U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of Washington, D.C. During a surreal hearing Monday in which the judge called into question the constitutionality of DOGE, Justice Department lawyers still could not tell her who the official administering DOGE is. It led to Kafkaesque exchanges like these, helpfully posted by Lawfare's Anna Bower: Kollar-Kotelly is hearing a case seeking to bar DOGE from accessing sensitive records maintained by the Treasury Department. Meanwhile, in a new ruling, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman of Maryland blocked DOGE's access to personally identifiable information at the Department of Education and the Office of Personnel Management. It's an answerable question, but still nada from the Trump administration. It was impossible to find a clear through-line in the messaging coming out of the Trump administration about Elon Musk's ridiculous weekend email: President Trump, famous for his reality TV 'You're fired,' tepidly said workers would be 'semi-fired' if they did not respond. OPM said workers were not required to respond after various government components had wrestled all day with what to tell their employees, in some cases sending mixed messages By the end of the day, Musk himself had re-upped his demand and threatened firings yet again: Government Executive: An independent federal oversight agency has deemed at least some of President Trump's mass firings of probationary period employees unlawful, creating a pathway for those employees to regain their jobs. The Office of Special Counsel, the agency responsible for investigating illegal actions taken against federal employees, issued its decision for six employees, each at different agencies. While the decision was technically limited in scope, it could have immediate impact on all terminated staff at those six agencies and could set a wide-ranging precedent across government. It has not been made public and was provided to Government Executive by a source within the government. OSC, which did not provide the document to Government Executive, verified its authenticity. Another example of the Trump clusterfuckery: The FDA has reinstated dozens of specialists involved in food safety, review of medical devices and other areas who were laid off last week. University of Minnesota Law School professor Nick Bednar has some helpful backgrounders on the existing legal frameworks that the DOGE-driven purges of federal workers are running hard up against: The Use and Abuse of Administrative Leave A Primer on Reductions in Force A key element of President Trump's executive power grab is disregarding any congressional limitations imposed on firing the people who sit atop the independent agencies of the executive branch. We're talking a host of key agencies like the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Merit Systems Protection Board. It will be a defining legal battle of his second presidency and one that the Supreme Court will likely weigh in on sooner than later, with implications for the Federal Reserve as well. TPM's Kate Riga has an early primer on the structural power dynamics and the legal landscape. The FBI is reeling from the one-two punch of Kash Patel and Dan Bongino as the new director and deputy director: NYT: Before Ascending to Top Tier of F.B.I., Bongino Fueled Right-Wing Disbelief WSJ: Dan Bongino Called the FBI 'Irredeemably Corrupt.' Now He'll Help Run It. I've long been fascinated by how scattered through the federal government are just enough misguided, disenchanted, peevish, grievance-filled, and maladaptive personalities for bad actors to raise up for their own corrupt ends when they take power. It's a recurring theme of our coverage over the years how these willing stooges get their chance to 'shine' and try to make the most of it. Former Trump DOJer Jeffrey Clark is a classic of the genre. It almost always ends badly, but not as badly as it should (Clark is now back in the new Trump administration). Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove appears to be the latest in the long line of these passed-over and overlooked opportunists who seize on suddenly no longer being the odd man out. And, yes, they seem chronically to be men. Acting DC U.S. attorney Ed Martin proudly tweeting his corrupt notion of the role of the Justice Department as a defender and weapon of President Donald Trump: Former West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner – who as recently as last year claimed that the CIA stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump – is now overseeing the Justice Department's vaunted Civil Rights Division on an acting basis. U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden of Washington, D.C., declined to restore immediately the Associated Press' access to presidential events, but he urged the Trump White House to reconsider its ban over the wire service's refusal to use 'Gulf Of America,' saying the case law 'is uniformly unhelpful to the White House.' Within hours of President Trump publicly threatening to end the political career of Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D), his Department of Education initiated a purported Title IX investigation of the University of Maine of transgender women in sports. Politico: A group of prominent military contractors, including former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, has pitched the Trump White House on a proposal to carry out mass deportations through a network of 'processing camps' on military bases, a private fleet of 100 planes, and a 'small army' of private citizens empowered to make arrests. The blueprint — laid out in a 26-page document President Donald Trump's advisers received before the inauguration — carries an estimated price tag of $25 billion and recommends a range of aggressive tactics to rapidly deport 12 million people before the 2026 midterms, including some that would likely face legal and operational challenges, according to a copy obtained by POLITICO. CNN: US joins Russia to vote against UN resolution condemning Russia's war against Ukraine Pranksters had a memorable stunt waiting for workers returning to mandatory in-office work at HUD headquarters:
