Political Glance
Donald Trump has signed an executive order making it easier to fire thousands of the best-paid workers in the US government aspart of a broader drive by his administration to overhaul the federal workforce.
The order, released by the White House and the office of personnel management (OPM) on Wednesday, strips job protections from a mostly senior group of federal workers – about 8,000 employees – earning up to almost $200,000 a year, and who are deemed to be “influencing” government policy.
In a call previewing the move, Scott Kupor, director of the OPM, which oversees the government’s human resources policies, said the administration needs to employ people willing and able to carry out orders to achieve the administration’s policy priorities.
“You can have any political views, but if you allow those views to basically interfere with your willingness to actually carry out lawful orders and policy directives with the administration, then this provides a mechanism obviously for people in those agencies to be able to be removed effectively at will,” he said.
Knocking on strangers’ doors on a warm May afternoon in Trenton, New Jersey, Adam Hamawy did not seem fazed when more than a few went unanswered.
At least six of the nine featured musical acts set to play in a concert series organized by the Trump administration to mark the United States’ 250th anniversary have dropped out, just one day after the lineup was announced.
A three-judge panel on Tuesday blocked Alabama Republicans’ congressional map that would’ve given the party a potential pickup opportunity in the midterms.
Early this month, a single pen stroke effectively ended representative Steve Cohen’s career in Congress. The man who has represented Memphis for 19 years will turn 77 later this month, but he wasn’t planning on retiring. He hadn’t lost any primary. The reason was that his district had been erased around him.
