News
PBS NewsHour – November 19, 2024 (10:00)
President-elect Trump has vowed to make wide-scale changes to the federal workforce by cutting jobs, replacing career civil servants with federal appointees and relocating government offices. We hear from federal government employees across the U.S. and Laura Barrón-López reports on this key part of Trump’s policy proposals.
PBS NewsHour, November 20, 2024
PBS NewsHour, November 20, 2024
State Department holds briefing as Biden permits Ukraine using anti-personnel land mines
Tribal leaders testify in House hearing on missing or murdered Indigenous women
Buttigieg, FEMA director and Senators Ossoff and Tillis testify on disaster funding
HHS Secretary Becerra testifies on refugee resettlement in House Judiciary hearing
CBS News, – November 19, 2024
Trump announced the DOGE in a statement on Tuesday, describing it as an effort to “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.”
Donald Trump is vowing to reduce wasteful federal spending by tapping two billionaires — Tesla CEO Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy — to spearhead the initiative, which the president-elect is calling the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
In October 2020, the Trump Administration issued an executive order that would have stripped protections from civil servants perceived as disloyal to the president and encouraged expressions of allegiance to the president when hiring. This effort is referred to as “Schedule F” because that was the name of the new employment category that the executive order created.
The administration claimed the authority to create Schedule F based on statutory language that exempted certain positions “of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character” from employment protections. Previous administrations and Congress always understood the language to apply only to a smaller number of positions traditionally filled by political appointees.
Trump has announced his intention to reissue Schedule F “on day one” of his next administration. During his first term, government employees were frequent targets of public insults, threats, and retaliation. Echoing Trump, other elected officials have advocated “fir[ing] every single mid-level bureaucrat” and made campaign promises to begin “slitting [bureaucrats’] throats on day one.”
Federal employee unions sought to balance reassuring members that they will fight the return of measures undermining feds’ civil service protections with asserting their commitment to nonpartisan service.
Labor groups expressing a willingness to work with an incoming president’s administration is nothing new—officials typically want to try to develop a relationship before becoming adversarial toward management. But after Trump’s first term was marked by numerous efforts to reduce labor power at federal agencies, leaders of employee groups acknowledge that the chances of a cooperative relationship are slim.
“Despite President-elect Trump’s track record with federal employees and unions, the National Treasury Employees Union will make every effort to work in good faith with his upcoming administration,” said NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald. “However, we are fully prepared to work with our allies in Congress and use all the tools we have to fight any and all actions taken by his administration that would harm frontline federal workers, our ability to represent them or their ability to serve the American people.”
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The US onAir network’s focus through the month of November is on the presidential race and competitive senate and house races … informing you about the candidates and their position on key issues while also providing you a civil place for discussion with your fellow Americans.
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