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New York Times
12-03-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Trump Appointee Filmed Influencer Videos on the Job
The same day the Office of Personnel Management informed hundreds of employees, including about 20 involved in the communications division, that they were being laid off, the department's top spokeswoman posted an Instagram video she filmed in her office showing off her outfit with the caption: 'a moment for mixed patterns.' On the day O.P.M. sent a memo to all federal department and agency heads asking for lists of underperforming employees to terminate, she flaunted a 'work look' that included a purple skirt that her followers could also purchase, retailing at $475. She would get a commission if they used her link. The spokeswoman, McLaurine Pinover, is not the only member of the Trump administration to have used her federal office to promote outside business interests, but former agency officials and ethics watchdogs say that the timing and content of the videos were both unlawful and especially tone-deaf. Government watchdogs say the videos, coming from the spokeswoman of the agency driving the layoffs of thousands of federal workers, exemplify a widespread disregard for government ethics across the Trump administration. 'It's illegal for a public employee to promote a private company in their government office,' said Donald Sherman, the executive director and chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group. 'On its own, maybe it would qualify as small potatoes, but context matters,' Mr. Sherman added. 'In the context of a president and an administration that are routinely engaged in profiteering and using the office of the presidency for financial gain, in the context of someone who owns a private company, Elon Musk, coming into the administration and dismantling the government as he has, and in the context of O.P.M. being central to the administration's attack on civil servants who actually want to be there to work for the American public, an O.P.M. political appointee engaging in this conduct is egregious.' Though presidents are legally exempt from certain conflict of interest laws, President Trump has not divested from many business interests, some of which involve real estate deals with foreign governments that could influence his diplomatic decisions. Mr. Musk, the tech billionaire whom Mr. Trump deputized to slash the federal government, continues to pursue federal contracts for his private businesses. And on Tuesday, the day news of Ms. Pinover's Instagram account broke, Mr. Trump made a show of purchasing a red Model S from Tesla, of which Mr. Musk is chief executive, on the White House grounds, just a day after the company's stock crashed. Ms. Pinover's short videos, each four to nine seconds, featured her in her office, lightheartedly modeling her clothes, applying makeup, working at her desk and occasionally blowing a kiss to the camera. They also included links to the clothes that would give her a commission from fans' purchases. The existence of Ms. Pinover's accounts was first reported by CNN. The Instagram account has since been deleted, while the account that would supply commissions, ShopMy, has been wiped clean, save for Ms. Pinover's name and picture and an invitation to 'Shop my looks!' In a statement, Ms. Pinover said she never made any money from the fashion videos. 'While I was battling breast cancer as a new mom, I felt so unlike myself. I turned to social media shortly after as a personal outlet,' she wrote. 'I never made any income and with only about 800 followers, I'm surprised the so-called 'newspaper of record' finds this newsworthy. My focus remains on serving the American people at O.P.M.' Whether she actually profited off the enterprise is irrelevant, Mr. Sherman said. The purpose of the account was to promote the clothing. Ms. Pinover took on her role in the Trump administration in January, but her Instagram account — and the start of her fashion influencer videos — predated that job. Before she joined the Trump administration, she worked as a senior director for the Herald Group, a communications and advocacy firm, starting in August 2023. Before that, Ms. Pinover was a spokeswoman for Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Former O.P.M. employees said that Ms. Pinover should have been warned against pursuing supplementary income streams, particularly on government property, as part of a standard ethics briefing employees receive when joining the agency. It was not immediately clear if Ms. Pinover had been explicitly warned against such activity when she started the job. White House representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 'Use of public property to film one's 'fashion influencer' videos should raise lots of ethical questions about how seriously the Trump administration is taking their oaths,' said Viet Tran, the deputy communications director of O.P.M. during the Biden administration, a political appointment. 'Whether it's Trump hawking Teslas on the South Lawn, SpaceX employees meddling in competitor contracts at F.A.A., or using your government offices for personal enrichment, it looks awful all around.'
New York Times
04-03-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Veterans Are Caught Up in Trump and Musk's Work Force Overhaul
Veterans, who make up a disproportionate share of federal employees, are feeling the brunt of the Trump administration's rapid push to downsize the work force, generating discord in a reliable political base for Republicans. Some Republican lawmakers are facing backlash at town hall gatherings where people have raised concerns about veterans being part of the deep cuts made by President Trump and his partner in this mission, the tech billionaire Elon Musk. And in an act of protest, some Democrats are bringing fired veterans as their guests to Mr. Trump's address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, where Mr. Trump is expected to outline more of his agenda. Nearly 30 percent of civil service employees in the federal government are veterans, according to data as of September 2024 from the Office of Personnel Management, the government's human resources arm. Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk have fired about 20,000 employees who were in probationary status, based on data compiled by The New York Times. About 30 percent of those probationary workers — or 6,000 — were veterans, according to a count by Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee as of Feb. 23. This includes more than 2,000 veterans at the Department of Defense, 676 at Treasury, about 500 at Energy and 450 at Agriculture. More job losses are around the corner, as agencies begin a formal process known as 'reduction in force,' including at the Pentagon where veterans make up 43 percent of the civilian work force, according to data from O.P.M. A spokeswoman for O.P.M. said the agency was aware that restructuring can be difficult for the employees who are fired. 'O.P.M. recognizes the dedication and service of all federal employees, including our veteran work force, and remains committed to supporting them during this transition,' the spokeswoman, McLaurine Pinover, said in a statement on Monday. Veterans who have already been fired are speaking out. Jacob Bushno, a veteran who did two tours in Iraq while he was in the Army's air assault division, was fired seven days shy of completing his one-year probationary period at the Forest Service. 'My mental health has been a roller coaster since this happened,' Mr. Bushno, who worked in the Shawnee National Forest in Illinois, said in an interview. Mr. Bushno said his performance review at the end of September was positive. Yet, like thousands of other fired federal employees less than a year into their positions, his termination letter said he did not meet the agency's standard and demonstrated poor performance. He is challenging his firing with an appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent agency that reviews personnel actions. Mr. Bushno has also appealed to his congressman, Representative Mike Bost, Republican of Illinois and the chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. Mr. Bushno said he had yet to get a response from Mr. Bost, whose office did not respond to a request for comment. 'You know, they say they're patriotic,' Mr. Bushno said of Mr. Bost and other Republicans who have been quiet on this issue. 'I haven't seen any patriotism out of them since all this has been going down.' Mr. Bushno said he reached out to the office of Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, and heard back from someone the next day. Democrats, out of power in Washington, are pushing back on Mr. Trump's rapid culling of the federal work force, including putting Republicans on the defensive over the firings that have hit veterans hard. On Tuesday, Representative Tom Barrett, Republican of Michigan, sent a letter to Doug Collins, the secretary of Veterans Affairs, writing that he supports the president's goal of reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy but that he was 'concerned that probationary but otherwise qualified veterans are being unintentionally let go in the process.' Representative Mark Alford, Republican of Missouri, faced angry constituents at a town hall on Feb. 25 as he tried to assure them that he supports the country's veterans. 'You do not care about us as federal employees,' Rebecca Reinholdt, who identified herself as the vice president the local American Federation of Government Employees union in Leavenworth, Kan., shouted at him. Senator Roger Marshall, Republican of Kansas, was booed at a town hall on Saturday when people started criticizing the firing of veterans from the federal work force. Mr. Marshall left early. And at a news conference last week, the co-chair of the House DOGE caucus, Representative Aaron Bean, Republican of Florida, said he knew veterans are hard workers and is confident they will find other jobs. (DOGE is the acronym for the Department of Government Efficiency, the group established by Mr. Trump and led by Mr. Musk that has directed the job cuts.) 'And if anybody can overcome obstacles of getting another job, it's our veterans,' Mr. Bean said. Mr. Trump said he was aware of the veterans affected by the firings. 'We take good care of our veterans, so we're watching that very carefully, and we hope it's going to be as small a number as possible,' Mr. Trump said last Thursday in the Oval Office. 'But we are having great success at slimming down our government.' Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, said Mr. Trump has waged a 'war' on veterans with these firings. 'And I'm calling it a war on veterans, because I don't think it can be just chalked up to accidental when the people making these decisions know who the federal work force is,' Mr. Kaine said in an interview on Monday. If Democrats are loud in opposing these cuts, Mr. Kaine said, he believes this is one area where Mr. Trump could back down. Mr. Kaine said that was why many Democrats, including him, are bringing fired veterans to Mr. Trump's address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday. 'We're going to continue to really push this and get louder and louder,' said Mr. Kaine, whose guest will be a disabled veteran from Fairfax who was fired from the Federal Aviation Administration's safety division. Senator Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona, is bringing a veteran from North Phoenix who was recently fired from his national security job at the Homeland Security Department. The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, is hosting an Army veteran, Alissa Ellman, who was recently fired from the Veterans Benefits Administration in Buffalo, N.Y., where she helped veterans with education claims. 'If this is really about government efficiency, then you're doing a really bad job when you fire people who are working really hard,' said Ms. Ellman, who was deployed to Afghanistan. Representative Jen A. Kiggans, Republican of Virginia, is one of few Republicans to speak publicly against these cuts. On Monday, she sent a letter to the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, urging him to prioritize veterans when making future cuts, including finding other federal positions for them. 'Many of these veterans already experience the daily challenges of transitioning to civilian life, and facing such layoffs only add to their undue burden,' Ms. Kiggans, whose district includes Hampton Roads where many veterans are working in civilian jobs, wrote on Monday. The federal government has prioritized hiring veterans and streamlined the process at the beginning of the Obama administration. Toward the end of his first administration, Mr. Trump issued an executive order directing agencies to hire a work force based on skills and not on where the applicant received a college degree. The Biden administration continued the practice, said William Resh, a public policy professor at the University of Southern California, said. As a result, many of the probationary employees who have been fired were hired on merit, just as Mr. Trump called for in 2020, Mr. Resh said. And on its website, the Office of Personnel Management touts the value of hiring veterans: 'We recognize those who have served in our armed forces often have the experience, skills and dedication necessary to achieve success as members of our civilian work force, and it is critical that we harness that talent.'
New York Times
28-02-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Federal Workers Will Get Another Email Asking Them to Detail Accomplishments
Federal workers are expected to receive another email as soon as Saturday asking them to describe what they achieved this past week, according to a person familiar with the matter. The email will come directly from agencies' human resources division this time, instead of from the Office of Personnel Management, the person said. The decision comes after O.P.M. leaders met with agency representatives yesterday and advised them to send out the emails, according to the person. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The decision to send out another round of emails was first reported by The Washington Post. Last Saturday, federal workers received an email from the Office of Personnel Management, the government's human resources arm, instructing them to detail their achievements from the past week by 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on Monday. 'Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager. Please do not send any classified information, links, or attachments,' the email read. The email blast came out after the billionaire Elon Musk said on social media that workers would be receiving the message shortly, and that failure to respond would be 'taken as a resignation.' Although Mr. Musk said he was acting at the encouragement of President Trump, the directive sowed chaos across the federal government. Over the weekend, officials at some agencies defied Mr. Musk's orders and told workers to pause or not respond to the email. By Monday afternoon, the Office of Personnel Management informed agencies that they did not have to require employees to respond to the email.
New York Times
25-02-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Trump Administration Live Updates: Personnel Officials Say Musk's Directive Is ‘Voluntary'
Pinned Elon Musk's monthlong rampage through the federal bureaucracy appears to have met its first real test, as some of President Trump's top loyalists flatly reject the billionaire's demand that their employees justify their jobs or be summarily fired. By Monday, just 48 hours after an email from Mr. Musk with the subject line 'What did you do last week?' landed in the email boxes of millions of federal workers, personnel officials proclaimed the 'request' to be voluntary even as Mr. Musk renewed his demand. For the first time since the beginning of Mr. Trump's return to power, government employees appeared to be fending off, at least for now, an ambush in their war with the world's richest man. Even if the head-spinning series of events — contradictory tweets from Mr. Musk, comments from the president and emails from agency heads — left many of them confused. After Mr. Musk's email, several agencies quickly sent out emails telling their employees they did not need to provide the five bullet points about their activity that he wanted. 'There is no H.H.S. expectation that H.H.S. employees respond to O.P.M., and there is no impact to your employment with the agency if you choose not to respond,' said an email sent to employees at the Department of Health and Human Services, referring to the agency that sent Mr. Musk's request, the Office of Personnel Management. The Department of Health and Human Services added that anyone who wanted to respond should 'assume that what you write will be read by malign foreign actors and tailor your response accordingly.' At virtually the same time that employees were told a response was no longer necessary, Mr. Trump weighed in during a visit with President Emmanuel Macron of France, praising Mr. Musk's demand as 'genius' and saying that employees who did not respond would be 'semi-fired' or 'fired.' Late Monday evening, Mr. Musk offered another twist on his social media site. 'Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance,' Mr. Musk wrote, apparently referring to federal employees who did not respond to his email by his original deadline of Monday at midnight. 'Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.' 'The email request was utterly trivial, as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send!' he said in another post. 'Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers. Have you ever witnessed such INCOMPETENCE and CONTEMPT for how YOUR TAXES are being spent?' Until this weekend, Mr. Trump's most senior officials had uniformly embraced Mr. Musk's call for a smaller, more efficient government, free of what Republicans call 'woke' ideology. Thousands of employees have been fired or put on leave. Entire agencies, like the U.S. Agency for International Development, have been all but shuttered. Remote workers have been told to return to the office or be fired. But the response to the weekend email suggests that there may in fact be limits to how far Mr. Musk, acting on Mr. Trump's behalf as the leader of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, can push the bureaucracy. Across the executive suites of the federal agencies, the Musk email triggered concerns about turf and security. The message fractured Mr. Trump's cabinet, with the leaders of some departments ordering their employees to comply and others directing workers to ignore the threat. Chiefs of staff and personnel chiefs at the national security and intelligence agencies spent Saturday and Sunday trying to develop a coordinated response, according to a senior U.S. official familiar with the discussions. The result of that effort began when Kash Patel, Mr. Trump's newly installed F.B.I. director, told the bureau's employees to 'pause any responses' to the Musk directive. The official, who asked not to be identified in order to discuss internal deliberations, said there was some concern that Mr. Musk might lash out over the weekend on his social media platform. The official said the weekend's activity added to anger at Mr. Musk among cabinet secretaries and agency heads for interfering with their departments. The responses from several department heads made it clear that they were offended by the idea that an outsider was trying to take over their personnel decisions. Other responses indicated that agency heads were concerned that employees might reveal secret or even classified information in their responses to Mr. Musk. At the C.I.A., senior officials did not put out a public statement, but some people at the agency were quietly instructed not to respond to Mr. Musk's email in the hopes that the problem would go away, according to a person familiar with the decision. White House officials denied that there had been any impact on Mr. Musk's authority, or even any dissension among the president's top officials across the government. 'Everyone is working together as one unified team at the direction of President Trump,' said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary. 'Any notion to the contrary is completely false.' A senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said that the fast-moving efforts by Mr. Musk and DOGE were 'exactly the point' even if they ruffled some feathers inside the administration. But the whiplash over the directives left many of the country's 2.3 million federal workers unsure exactly what they should do — even after Monday's reassurance from the Office of Personnel Management. Even as televisions played Mr. Trump's comments lauding Mr. Musk, his personnel department informed agencies that responding to the Musk email was now 'voluntary' and that failing to respond would not be considered a resignation, as Mr. Musk had indicated. The dissent among the top ranks of Mr. Trump's administration was rare for a president whose demands for absolute loyalty have resulted in dramatic executive actions by his subordinates, all acting in lock step to quickly push through Mr. Trump's agenda. Over the weekend, numerous top officials defied Mr. Musk, urging their employees to 'pause' or 'not respond' to the demand for a description of five things they did the previous week. Employees at the Departments of State, Defense, Energy, Homeland Security and Justice were all flatly told not to comply. 'For now, D.O.E. employees are asked to please pause on any direct response to the O.P.M. email,' Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a weekend email. A top State Department official wrote, 'No employee is obligated to report their activities outside of their department chain of command.' At the same time, the president's handpicked leaders at the Treasury, the General Services Administration, the Department of Transportation and the Office of Management and Budget told employees to follow Mr. Musk's weekend directive. A Treasury email said, 'You are directed to respond to this message before the deadline,' adding that 'we expect that compliance will not be difficult or time-consuming.' The split among advisers came just two days before Mr. Trump is set to convene his first full cabinet meeting of his second term at the White House on Wednesday. Eight years ago, his first cabinet meeting turned into a session of gushing praise for Mr. Trump as his top aides extolled, as one put it, the 'blessing' of working for the president. That could still happen again on Wednesday. People in Mr. Trump's current orbit have repeatedly sung his praises in recent weeks. After a meeting with Russian officials last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said over and over again that 'Trump is the only leader who can bring peace to Ukraine.' Madeleine Ngo and Nicholas Nehamas contributed reporting from Washington.
New York Times
29-01-2025
- Business
- New York Times
What to Know About Trump's Federal Worker Payout Plan
The Trump administration has offered roughly two million government employees the option to resign and receive a payout, a move that could significantly reduce the size of the federal work force. The plan immediately drew criticism from Democrats and unions representing federal workers, who said such a vast reduction would create chaos for Americans who rely on government services. Here is a look at the plan and its possible implications: What is the plan? An email sent to employees on Tuesday by the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees the federal civilian work force, was titled 'Fork in the Road.' It laid out a program for deferred resignations, under which employees of federal agencies are given the option to resign and continue being paid until Sept. 30. Anyone who accepts the offer will not be expected to continue working, except in rare cases, and would be paid until the end of September, it said. The last date to accept the offer is Feb. 6. To do so, employees could simply send an email from their government account with the word 'resign.' The O.P.M. published a question-and-answer page about the plan on its website. Why is the Trump administration doing this? Slashing the size of the federal government is a priority for Mr. Trump, as it has been for many Republican presidents. After winning the November election, he said that a smaller and more efficient government, with less bureaucracy, would be a 'perfect gift to America' for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. Elon Musk, the tech billionaire Mr. Trump tapped to lead what he called the Department of Government Efficiency, on Tuesday shared a post on X, the social media platform he owns, claiming that 5 to 10 percent of the federal work force was expected to quit, saving the government $100 billion. Mr. Trump has also described the federal work force as part of a 'deep state' that attempted to thwart his priorities during his first term in office. Dramatic action is necessary to combat this group's power, according to Mr. Trump. Critics say Mr. Trump's efforts risk gutting federal agencies whose nonpartisan work offers far-reaching legal, economic and social benefits for Americans. The payout plan is part of a raft of changes that Mr. Trump envisions for the federal civil service, some of which were detailed in the email sent by the O.P.M. They include ending remote work, changes to performance standards to ensure that all employees are 'reliable, loyal, trustworthy,' and the reclassification of some workers to what is known as 'at-will status,' in effect making them easier to fire. Who is eligible? The O.P.M. said that all federal workers were eligible, with the exception of military personnel, postal workers and employees involved with immigration enforcement or national security. Individual agencies could also exclude specific staff members or positions from the offer, it said. What happens to those who don't take the offer? The letter says that the deferred resignation offer is 'completely voluntary,' and that employees who don't respond to the email will retain their jobs. But it warns those who choose to remain in their positions that retaining their jobs is not guaranteed. 'At this time, we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency but should your position be eliminated you will be treated with dignity and will be afforded the protections in place for such positions,' the letter said. Is the offer legal? Much about the plan remained unclear, including whether the administration can legally offer such a sweeping buyout package without budget authorization from Congress. On the Senate floor Tuesday night, Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, urged federal workers not to resign, and warned that the administration was not legally bound to pay them after they stopped working. 'The president has no authority to make that offer. There's no budget line item to pay people who are not showing up for work,' Mr. Kaine said. 'If you accept that offer and resign, he'll stiff you.' The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 800,000 federal workers and is the largest union of federal employees, condemned the offer, which its president said would 'cause chaos for the Americans who depend on a functioning federal government.' The White House is already facing mounting legal challenges to the flood of executive orders Mr. Trump has issued in the nine days since he was inaugurated. This week, a federal judge halted a Trump administration order to pause billions of dollars in federal grant and loan programs. Another temporarily blocked Mr. Trump's order ending birthright citizenship.
