In a win for President Donald Trump on Tuesday, the Supreme Court in a 7-2 decision blocked the effort of U.S. Judge William Alsup to force the Trump administration to rehire thousands of fired workers in numerous federal agencies.
On March 13, Alsup, a San Francisco judge appointed by former President Bill Clinton, had ruled on a lawsuit brought by federal employee unions that federal agencies had to rehire more than 16,000 probationary employees fired by the Trump administration’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM). He ordered OPM and the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs to bring back employees immediately.
Calling the fact that the Trump administration attributed the firings to “performance,” Alsup<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/13/fired-federal-probationary-employees-court-ruling-00228721" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> called</a> that a “gimmick,” adding, “It is sad, a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie. &#8230; The words that I give you today should not be taken that some wild-and-crazy judge in San Francisco said that an administration cannot engage in a reduction in force. It can be done, if it’s done in accordance with the law.”
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court for a stay of Alsup’s order, which was granted. “The district court’s extraordinarily overbroad remedy is now inflicting ongoing, irreparable harm on the Executive Branch that warrants this Court’s urgent intervention,” Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris told the court.
“The District Court’s injunction was based solely on the allegations of the nine non-profit-organization plaintiffs in this case. But under established law, those allegations are presently insufficient to support the organizations’ standing,” the Supreme Court <a href="https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25888805/24a904-order.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ruled</a>.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
“The full implications of the ruling are not clear given that a federal judge in Maryland earlier this month issued a preliminary injunction that reinstated some of the employees not covered in the case before the Supreme Court,” CNN <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/08/politics/probationary-fired-employees-supreme-court-trump/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">noted</a>.
<p style="font-weight: 400;" data-uri="cms.cnn.com/_components/paragraph/instances/cm98p7u660006356obqvmvacy@published" data-editable="text" data-component-name="paragraph" data-article-gutter="true" data-analytics-observe="on">“Although the court put Alsup’s order on hold, a different federal judge in Maryland also has issued an order, which remains in effect for now, that requires the reinstatement of probationary employees at 20 federal agencies who live and work in the 19 states (along with the District of Columbia) that brought the case,” ScotusBlog <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/04/justices-pause-order-to-reinstate-fired-federal-employees/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">explained</a>.

President Trump Holds “Make America Wealthy Again Event” In White House Rose Garden

SCOTUS Gives Trump Another Win, Blocks Rehiring Of Fired Federal Employees

Courts

Donald Trump

Firings

Office of Personnel Management

Politics

SCOTUS

Supreme Court

Onerous federal regulations could stymie the Trump administration&#8217;s efforts to lay off the most entrenched and highest-paid government workers, and could perversely result in terminated DEI specialists being given preference for open jobs across the government, a Daily Wire review found.
“Reductions in Force (RIF),” as government layoffs are known, are governed by complicated regulations that give extraordinary rights to people who have worked for the government the longest — even letting them “bump,” or steal the job of, someone below them. They often keep the same pay grade after nabbing a subordinate&#8217;s job, resulting in overpaying people to do menial jobs, while getting rid of the freshest and most affordable talent.
“A RIF is going to leave the oldest, most entrenched bureaucrats in place, and get rid of the youngest, lowest-paid employees, and even they are going to have tickets to the front of the line” for any future job opening, a longtime federal human resources official told The Daily Wire.
Those who are &#8220;bumped&#8221; can, in turn, steal the job of someone with even less tenure, resulting in a chaotic and time-consuming cascade. The losers at the end of this bureaucratic game of musical chairs are paid severance. Then they are put on a list that grants them preference for any job the government subsequently hires for at any agency, giving them the opportunity to keep the severance and also be re-hired, according to the Office of Personnel Management’s <a href="https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/workforce-restructuring/reductions-in-force-rif/workforce_reshaping.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Workforce Reshaping Operations Handbook</a>.
Although the Trump administration will likely target the most useless or ideological positions for layoffs, when it comes time to replace workers at more necessary jobs in the course of normal turnover, agencies may be forced to re-hire the very people originally attracted to such low-value jobs.
This could be the latest roadblock in the Trump administration&#8217;s push to restructure the federal workforce. This week alone, the Department of Education laid off half its workforce; a judge <a href="https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2025/03/judge-orders-reinstatement-most-fired-probationary-federal-workers/403721/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">overturned</a> the terminations of 24,000 probationary employees from various government agencies, even though such new employees are supposed to be the easiest to fire; and the House of Representatives passed a funding bill that could be less than helpful in making layoffs stick.
The OPM handbook says agencies must establish a Career Transition Assistance Program (CTAP) that gives “special selection priority to well-qualified surplus and/or displaced agency employees who apply for agency vacancies…this agency selection priority applies before the agency can select any other candidate from either within or outside the agency.” They also must create an Interagency Career Transition Assistance Plan (ICTAP) which does the same thing but for any federal job, even at other agencies.
Federal <a href="https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-5/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-330/subpart-G" target="_blank" rel="noopener">regulations</a> make clear that managers must hire laid-off employees for open positions even though they &#8220;may not equate to the highly or best qualified.&#8221; They must merely meet the minimum qualifications on paper, for example, having a college degree.
“Let’s say they were laid off from a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hhss-chief-equity-officer-hides-from-trump-with-falsified-resume-new-title" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DEI role</a> at HUD but apply for a management analyst position at USDA. If a human resources specialist says they meet the minimum qualifications, they get that job before the hiring manager can even interview other people,” the human resources official said.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he is currently employed in a non-political federal job. He supports widespread government reductions, but cautioned that they could backfire if they are not done strategically with the labyrinth of rules, laws, and union provisions in mind.
“It’s very important to keep these people out of government: they had a crazy ideological agenda which none of us as career civil servants should have,” he said of employees hired into DEI and other activism roles. But people coming from the private sector might underestimate the number of landmines, planted by decades of civil service laws, rules, and union contracts, that could result in their “just slipping into other roles and continuing to peddle their ideas” — potentially in positions with more influence.
How federal layoffs work
A RIF targets positions, not individuals. Government managers must specify a unit of the office within which the RIF will occur, called a &#8220;competitive area.&#8221; If there are positions in the unit that are not eliminated, people whose positions were eliminated can steal those jobs from colleagues with lower status rankings.
Under the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/3502" target="_blank" rel="noopener">law</a>, that ranking comes from &#8220;1) tenure of employment 2) military preference&#8230; 3) length of service; and 4) efficiency or performance ratings.&#8221; Under OPM <a href="https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-5/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-351" target="_blank" rel="noopener">regulations</a>, tenure is the most important. Performance ratings can only be used as a tie-breaker.
When agencies have an entire office dedicated to DEI, &#8220;bumping&#8221; can be avoided. Every position in the competitive unit can be eliminated. The problem is that many agencies have one or two DEI positions scattered among various offices. That means the DEI hires could steal the position of someone else in the unit, such as a general human resources position.
If the government simply hires no one, the &#8220;ICTAP&#8221; priority re-hiring problem would be moot, too. It&#8217;s unlikely that no hiring will occur, but extensive layoffs going well beyond DEI offices could prevent the worst employees from being re-hired, since hiring managers will at least have a broader pool of recycled employees to choose from.
On February 26, OPM and the Office of Management and Budget <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25545383-opm-omb-guidance-on-doge-workforce-eo-22625/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told agencies</a> that layoffs should be done in accordance with the OPM handbook, but on an expedited timetable. Agencies were instructed to identify the “competitive areas” subject to RIF by March 13.
Then they should spend a month developing the totem-pole rankings used in bumping. That&#8217;s a complicated task involving the review of every employee&#8217;s personnel file, though there is software called AutoRIF that can help.
Around April 13, agencies should provide notice of layoffs. Typically, 60 days notice is required, but OPM can shorten it to 30 days. That would result in positions being eliminated around May 13 — or at least that&#8217;s when the &#8220;bumping&#8221; would begin.
That&#8217;s an optimistic timetable. Layoffs can be appealed to the Merit Systems Protection Board, which has already blocked numerous actions by the Trump administration, or other offices, such as the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
MSPB can rule that a layoff was unnecessary or inappropriate. The best way to counter that is for Congress to slash agencies&#8217; funding: it is hard to argue that a lack of money isn&#8217;t a good reason to end a position. However, the continuing resolution passed by the House might not cut deeply enough to provide that justification.
Although layoff protections are sometimes characterized as stemming from laws in the 1940s and 1970s – changeable only by Congress – many only come from regulations. The Trump administration’s OPM could change those regulations, though not quickly enough for the timeline spelled out in the OPM/OMB memo.
OMB did not return a request for comment, nor did the Department of Education, which laid off half its workforce this week.
Buyouts and severance
The complexities around RIFs explain why the Trump administration sought a different path in the form of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/kamala-harris-aide-under-doj-investigation-falsifying-paperwork-to-get-musk-buyout" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“Fork in the Road” buyouts</a>, where employees voluntarily resigned in exchange for eight months of pay.
The number of employees who took the buyout was underwhelming: 75,000. That’s less than half the number of employees who quit or retire from the federal government in any typical year, according to OPM data, meaning the buyout may have just given eight months of free pay to people who already planned to retire or quit.
Fork in the Road also spared teleworkers from having to come back to the physical office. But in many cases, employees laid off against their will could get similar pay, according to <a href="https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-administration/fact-sheets/severance-pay/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">OPM severance calculations</a>. Employees get one week of pay for every year of service up to the first 10 and two weeks per year after that. But the severance can rise significantly for employees close to retirement age, adding 7.5% for every year older than the age of 40. A 45-year-old employee with 20 years of service making $78,000 would get a $71,000 severance, or about 11 months of pay.
After the Fork in the Road deadline of February 12, OMB and OPM encouraged agencies to offer Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment (VCIP) buyouts, but those are $25,000, comparing favorably to RIF severance only for junior employees.
Another option is firing employees for misconduct or poor performance, depriving them of RIF protections and rehiring eligibility. Typically only 11,000 or 12,000 employees are fired for disciplinary or performance reasons per year, according to OPM data. That could be increased significantly by managers being more aggressive. However, policies could get in the way there too: Employees put on a performance improvement plan have to be retained if there is evidence that they showed any improvement at all, for example.
The administration could attempt strategies such as firing (rather than laying off) DEI employees for violating civil rights laws, though this would be labor-intensive and likely result in a long period of appeals and lawsuits. The worst result could be a years-long process in which fired or laid-off employees are eventually reinstated with backpay, giving them hundreds of thousands of dollars in free money.
“The timeline is very difficult for a president with four years when these review boards take years to rule on these things,” the federal human resources officer said.

Close up of Employee termination form

How Laying Off DEI Employees Could Backfire Thanks To Bizarre Federal Rules

If government bureaucrats seem a little slower than employees elsewhere, it could be because a court order prohibits the federal government from using tests to objectively rank job applicants — on the basis that hiring the most competent employees had an “adverse impact” on blacks and Hispanics.
A 1981 court order blocked agencies from using any test for job applicants that would result in a statistically significant difference in hiring rates between blacks and Hispanics on one hand, and whites on the other. That is akin to blocking colleges from using the SAT.
Now, the Trump administration is set to ask a Washington, D.C., court to dissolve the 40-year ban, arguing that it illegally puts race over merit when it comes to federal hiring, The Daily Wire has learned. The move seems likely to prevail given the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action, and could allow Donald Trump to permanently reshape the permanent federal workforce into one comprised of the best and brightest.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management &#8220;must be relieved of the Luevano Consent Decree to return common sense to federal hiring,” the Trump administration will tell the D.C. federal court, according to a motion exclusively obtained by The Daily Wire.
The motion says that the decree “blatantly conflicts with current law” because it “requires the federal government to make hiring decisions using explicit racial classification&#8221; and &#8220;this kind of blatant racial favoritism is not permitted under current Supreme Court precedent.” It cites a string of cases, including the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard case that ended affirmative action. “By favoring the applications of blacks and Hispanics, the Decree disfavors all other racial groups. Like school admissions, hiring in the federal government is a ‘zero-sum’ proposition,” it says.
The administration will argue that the decree blocks the president from using “heavily researched and predictive tests that would streamline the federal hiring process and lead to a more capable workforce.”
In the 1970s, OPM evaluated hiring prospects via a written test called the Professional Administrative Career Examination (PACE). Its scores accurately predicted who would go on to be exemplary employees. But a class-action lawsuit said that testing for cognitive ability would reduce the number of blacks and Hispanics in the workforce.
President Jimmy Carter&#8217;s administration maintained that PACE was rigorously developed to be fair and was accurate and useful. But in the final days of Carter&#8217;s term, the administration agreed to a legal settlement with the plaintiffs agreeing to stop using the test and give them veto power over any replacement.
In the next decade, OPM developed six different tests to attempt to satisfy the decree. But every test that accurately identified the most competent workers also had “the greatest adverse impact” to blacks, the court was told years ago, even though nothing in the tests was, on its face, racist.
In 1990, OPM tried another test, which combined objective questions that measured cognitive ability with a “self-rating section that helps reduce adverse impact.” That still wasn’t enough to create the exact statistical equity demanded by the ruling. As a result, OPM began using solely the self-rating section.
In other words, the only test OPM has found to result in a large portion of blacks in the workforce is one that essentially measures boastfulness. Many federal agencies now hire based on a multiple choice questionnaire where applicants rank themselves based on how great they are at different tasks. This has become a common method of ranking applicants to federal jobs, even though the Merit Systems Protection Board found that is “far less able to predict future performance.”
“By relying solely on self-assessments of ‘life and work experience and training,’ the rating schedule struggles to distinguish between entry-level candidates, none of whom have ‘a great deal of experience,'&#8221; the Trump administration&#8217;s motion says. &#8220;As a result, many agencies have expressed ‘dissatisfaction with the quality of candidates referred by OPM from this rating schedule.’”
The Carter-era settlement also gave a boost to those with “oral Spanish language proficiency and/or the requisite knowledge of Hispanic culture,” while not even mentioning any racial groups except blacks and Hispanics.
The Trump administration will argue that “such institutional reform decrees were never intended to turn the federal court into an ‘indefinite institutional monitor.’” It said that the government can only use race in certain “narrowly-tailored” situations that must “be flexible, have a sunset provision, and be of limited duration.” It said that when the Supreme Court struck down Harvard’s affirmative action program, it pointed out that affirmative action was supposed to have been temporary. The Luevano Consent Decree said “jurisdiction shall expire…five years after the cessation of the use of PACE results,” yet the motion says that “was more than forty years ago, and there is still no end in sight.”
Even if it were permissible to make hiring decisions to achieve racial outcomes, none of its plans have worked as intended, the motion adds. OPM also added a fast-track to hiring for employees who had a high GPA or ranked near the top of their class, intended to attract people from historically black colleges. Yet “white women came to be the primary group hired through the Outstanding Scholar Program.”
A Daily Wire analysis of OPM data showed that blacks are over-represented in the federal workforce, not under-represented, making it hard to justify the continuance of the affirmative action decree. Eighteen percent of cabinet agency employees are black, about 50% higher than the percentage of blacks in the population of the United States. At some agencies, the disproportionality is astounding, such as 36% at the Department of Education and Department of Housing and Urban Development, and 29% at the Department of Treasury.
The 1981 consent decree relies on the “disparate impact” theory — which holds that, any time an outcome doesn’t exactly mirror the races of the overall population, it is enough to prove racism even if no tangible racism occurred — that has been rejected by even many Democrats. Many on the Left have been reduced to arguing that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) measures don&#8217;t pit racial identity against competence — something that is plainly untrue when it comes to OPM using competency tests.
Colleges that flirted with going SAT-free around 2021 have largely reversed their decisions. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has told New York City Democrats to stop trying to do away with the entrance exam to a math magnet high school just because mostly Asians do well on it. President Joe Biden signed a law getting rid of a similar “life experience” survey used to boost <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-is-right-democrats-have-a-history-of-racial-scandals-in-aviation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">minority hiring for air traffic controllers</a> after outrage about how it could put lives at risk.
The motion will be argued by the office of U.S. Attorney for D.C. Ed Martin, a hard-charging conservative who has sought to undo liberals&#8217; use of the D.C. court system for political purposes, including dismissing January 6 cases after Trump pardoned them. He has also indicted an alleged Chinese spy, investigated a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/kamala-harris-aide-under-doj-investigation-falsifying-paperwork-to-get-musk-buyout" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kamala Harris staffer</a> for alleged fraud, and vowed to imprison &#8220;thugs with guns.&#8221;
The motion set to be filed soon by the Trump administration says that “by favoring the applications of blacks and Hispanics, the Decree disfavors all other racial groups. Like school admissions, hiring in the federal government is a ‘zero-sum’ proposition.”

Elon Musk, Donald Trump

Feds Can’t Hire For Competence Because Jimmy Carter Said It Was Racist. Trump Wants To Fix That.

Exclusive: Trump To Challenge 40-Year Old Court Ruling That Required Feds To Hire Based On DEI

Elon Musk

A former top aide to Kamala Harris is now under criminal investigation, accused of forging paperwork to try to take advantage of Elon Musk’s &#8220;Fork in the Road&#8221; buyout offer, The Daily Wire has learned.
The probe is likely to explore whether high-level officials — potentially including Harris herself and Lina Khan, Joe Biden’s chair of the Federal Trade Commission — conspired to embed Nathaniel Segal into a job at the FTC just before Trump’s inauguration. The placement involved a series of maneuvers that appear to have been designed to evade personnel and ethics regulations, hide that Segal was a political appointee, and prevent the Trump administration from firing him.
Segal, who worked as a Deputy Domestic Policy Advisor to Harris when she was Vice President, was installed as Deputy Chief Technology Officer at the FTC on January 18, two days before Trump’s inauguration. He was placed on the payroll on direct orders of Khan despite the fact that he was missing essential paperwork about his career history, three Trump administration officials told The Daily Wire.
But as the scheme began to unravel in mid-February, Segal tried to pull the rip-cord by doctoring a document to try to secure the Deferred Resignation Program buyout, despite its deadline having passed and Segal not having received the offer in the first place, the officials said. The buyout program gives eligible employees benefits worth as much as $200,000 in exchange for leaving the government.
A Department of Justice official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the department received a criminal referral from the FTC outlining Segal&#8217;s alleged scheme. The official confirmed the department was taking a “broad” look at it. Segal did not return a request for comment.
Numerous apparent sleights of hand resulted in Segal being hired and classified as a tenured, non-political civil servant, which had the effect of making it harder for the Trump administration to fire him.
Beginning in May 2024, Segal worked as Deputy Domestic Policy Advisor to Harris in the legislative-branch office, where the vice president maintains as presiding officer of the Senate, according to <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CDOC-118sdoc13/pdf/GPO-CDOC-118sdoc13.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Senate records</a>.
But on January 7, 2025, after Harris lost the election, he was hired by the Executive Office of the President, where his title was Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Advisor to the Vice President. He was in that role for just 11 days before he was hired at the FTC.
The strange detour from the Senate — which seemingly would have required the involvement of multiple of Harris’ uppermost staff, if not the vice president herself — meant the FTC would have to get his personnel file, which is used to determine his hiring suitability and eligibility for various protections, from the Biden administration. But the Biden White House never sent it, despite numerous requests. Khan ordered him to be placed on the payroll anyway, and he was enrolled as a non-probationary employee, as if he was a longtime career employee transferring from another executive-branch agency, they said.
It wasn’t until after Trump took over that the FTC finally got a response from the Executive Office of the President, which said Segal was a political appointee and did not meet the criteria to be a tenured civil servant.
By then, it was becoming clear why Democrats seemed to go to lengths to make Segal a &#8220;non-probationary&#8221; employee. Trump ordered agencies to consider laying off probationary employees, since they have fewer job protections. Meanwhile, harder-to-get-rid-of tenured career employees could elect to resign in exchange for eight months’ pay and benefits, if they sent an email saying “Resign” by February 10.
On February 14, the FTC’s human resources department told Segal that it was classifying him as a new employee who needed to serve a one-year probationary period. Segal expressed concern that his job would no longer be safe, then suddenly claimed to have already accepted the buyout offer, which had closed four days prior, they said.
The Office of Personnel Management had no record of Segal accepting the buyout, so the FTC asked him for proof. He sent a screenshot purporting to show him emailing OPM on February 10 with the word “resign.” It asked him to forward the actual email, but he did not. The FTC determined that such an email was never sent from its servers, they said.
On February 26, Segal pressed the human resources department about the money. The human resources department set up a meeting with him about it for the next day. When Segal saw that a top lawyer for the agency was invited, he got squirrelly and resigned on the spot, they said.
According to his LinkedIn, Segal attended Yale, Harvard, and Stanford Graduate School of Business. Before working for Harris, Segal worked for the Obama White House &#8220;as a presidential appointee, working across the National Economic Council and the Office of Science and Technology Policy as senior advisor to President Obama on issues of economics, technology, investing and finance,&#8221; according to <a href="https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/newsroom/school-news/five-mba-students-recognized-2020-siebel-scholars" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Stanford</a>. He also &#8220;held roles in the private sector at T. Rowe Price, Bain Capital, Eli Lilly, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs.&#8221;
At Yale, he <a href="https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/newsroom/school-news/five-mba-students-recognized-2020-siebel-scholars" target="_blank" rel="noopener">majored</a> in &#8220;history of medicine, ethnicity, race, and migration.&#8221; He serves on the board of <a href="https://alumni.yale.edu/people/nathan-segal" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Yale&#8217;s Alumni Association</a> and &#8220;is a founding member of Native American Yale Alumni, chief financial officer of the Yale Latino Alumni Association, [and] a member of the AYA Diversity &amp; Inclusion Task Force.&#8221;

Kamala Harris

Kamala Aide Under DOJ Investigation For Allegedly Falsifying Paperwork To Get Musk Buyout

Department of Justice

Elon Musk said Monday that federal employees would be given “another chance” to reply to an email from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) asking them what they accomplished over the past week or face termination. 
Musk had initially set a deadline at 11:59 pm Monday to respond or be terminated, but he did not provide a deadline for those given &#8220;another chance&#8221; to provide the requested information.
“Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance,” Musk posted on X on Monday evening. “Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance.
Failure to respond a second time will result in termination. <a href="https://t.co/04xzgScXfj">https://t.co/04xzgScXfj</a>
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1894177129887404484?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The latest message has caused confusion among some federal workers in what has been perceived as conflicting instructions. Musk&#8217;s comments come as OPM said in a <a href="https://chcoc.gov/sites/default/files/OPM%20Guidance%20Memo%20on%20Government-wide%20email%20What%20did%20you%20do%20last%20week%202-24-2025.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">memo</a> on Monday evening that &#8220;Agency heads may exclude personnel from this expectation at their discretion and should inform OPM of the categories of the employees excluded and reasons for exclusion.&#8221; In earlier guidance, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/responses-to-elons-what-did-you-do-last-week-email-are-optional-trump-admin-clarifies" target="_blank" rel="noopener">OPM reportedly said</a> it had &#8220;informed agencies that employee responses to the OPM email is voluntary.&#8221;
 Previously, President Donald Trump said that it would be possible that those who don’t respond might lose their jobs. 
Musk, who has led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort, made the comments in response to a post from Daily Wire host Matt Walsh, who urged the Trump administration to fire any worker who didn’t answer the email or complained about it. 
“Fire any federal worker who didn’t answer the email. Fire any who complained publicly about the email. Fire any who complained privately about the email. Fire any who did anything but cheerfully and promptly answer it,” Walsh said. 
The original email sent out by OPM had the subject line, “What did you do last week?” and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dem-senators-cant-escape-elon-musk-asking-what-they-got-done-last-week">instructed</a> employees to reply with a list of roughly five accomplishments and carbon-copy their managers. &#8220;Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,” Musk posted on social media. 
However, on Monday, OPM said it had &#8220;clarified that a non-response to the email does not equate to a resignation.”
Later <a href="https://chcoc.gov/sites/default/files/OPM%20Guidance%20Memo%20on%20Government-wide%20email%20What%20did%20you%20do%20last%20week%202-24-2025.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">guidance</a> from OPM further clarified how OPM would be handling the memo. 
“(A)gencies should consider any appropriate actions regarding employees who fail to respond to activity/accomplishment requests. It is agency leadership’s decision as to what actions are taken,” said Acting OPM Director Charles Ezell. 
Some agencies, including the FBI and State Department, instructed personnel to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-officials-tell-employees-not-to-respond-to-musks-productivity-email" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ignore</a> the email, noting they have their own procedures. 
Trump said that agencies telling their workers to ignore the email was “done in a friendly manner” with confidentiality in mind and was not a rebuke of Musk. He also praised the sending of the letter, saying it was part of his efforts to cut down on government waste. 
“There was a lot of genius in sending it. We’re trying to find out if people are working and so we’re sending a letter to people: ‘Please tell us what you did last week.’ If people don’t respond, it’s very possible that there is no such person or they’re not working.”

Elon Musk Joins President Trump For Signing Executive Orders In The Oval Office

Musk Gives Federal Workers ‘Another Chance’ To Justify Employment Or Be Fired

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

General

Matt Walsh

On Monday, the Trump administration&#8217;s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) clarified that responses to an email announced by Elon Musk urging federal workers to share their accompaniments over the past week are optional.
&#8220;This afternoon, OPM during a Chief Human Capital Officers Council meeting, informed agencies that employee responses to the OPM email is voluntarily,&#8221; OPM declared in guidance shared with human resource officers at every agency, according to <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/5161737-opm-defends-musk-email/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThis%20afternoon%2C%20OPM%20during%20a,not%20equate%20to%20a%20resignation.%E2%80%9D" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Hill</a>. &#8220;OPM also clarified that a non-response to the email does not equate to a resignation.&#8221;
Musk, who is overseeing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort under Trump, announced on Saturday that an email would be sent out to federal workers. OPM <a href="https://x.com/JacquiHeinrich/status/1893477491764850697" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sent</a> the email with the subject line, &#8220;What did you do last week?&#8221; It <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dem-senators-cant-escape-elon-musk-asking-what-they-got-done-last-week" target="_blank" rel="noopener">requested</a> employees reply with a list of roughly five accomplishments and carbon-copy their managers. A deadline of Monday at 11:59 p.m. EST was given.
The original OPM email caused a bit of a stir in Washington. Some agencies, including the <a href="https://x.com/ryangrim/status/1893699466491756796" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FBI</a> and <a href="https://x.com/margbrennan/status/1893662852940022158" target="_blank" rel="noopener">State Department</a>, instructed their personnel to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-officials-tell-employees-not-to-respond-to-musks-productivity-email" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ignore</a> the email, noting they have their own procedures. Democrats in Congress <a href="https://x.com/OversightDems/status/1894065541528121521" target="_blank" rel="noopener">demanded</a> clarity on whether a non-response would actually constitute a resignation, and some unions even took <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyz2xk7d9xo" target="_blank" rel="noopener">legal action</a>.
At the White House earlier on Monday, President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-approves-of-elons-productivity-email-were-trying-to-find-out-if-people-are-working" target="_blank" rel="noopener">endorsed</a> Musk&#8217;s actions, suggesting that the &#8220;What did you do last week?&#8221; email was just the latest effort by his administration&#8217;s DOGE effort to track down areas where the government is being run poorly.
&#8220;What they&#8217;re doing is they&#8217;re trying to find out who&#8217;s working for the government. Are we paying other people that aren&#8217;t working? Where is all that money going? We have found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud so far, and we&#8217;ve just started,&#8221; Trump said, adding later, &#8220;There was a lot of genius in sending it. We&#8217;re trying to find out if people are working and so we&#8217;re sending a letter to people: &#8216;Please tell us what you did last week.&#8217; If people don&#8217;t respond, it&#8217;s very possible that there is no such person or they&#8217;re not working.&#8221;
Trump also insisted that agencies telling their workers to ignore the email was &#8220;done in a friendly manner&#8221; and he acknowledged that &#8220;confidential things&#8221; had to be considered. &#8220;They don&#8217;t mean that in any way combatively with Elon,&#8221; Trump continued. &#8220;They&#8217;re just saying there are some people that you don’t want to really have them tell you what they’re working on last week. But other than that, I think everyone thought it was a pretty ingenious idea.&#8221;
Fox News correspondent Jacqui Heinrich <a href="https://x.com/JacquiHeinrich/status/1894138735396004335" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> on X that a White House official told her news outlet that &#8220;DOGE is moving fast, at the direction of POTUS, and that’s exactly the point. It’s all about efficiency, even internally.&#8221; Heinrich shared that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, &#8220;Everyone is working together as one unified team at the direction of President Trump. Any notion to the contrary is completely false.&#8221;

Donald Trump and Elon Musk

Responses To Elon’s ‘What Did You Do Last Week?’ Email Are Optional, Trump Admin Clarifies

Executive

White House

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected an effort to block the Trump administration from buying out the contracts of tens of thousands of federal workers, saying that the public sector unions that sued lacked standing. 
U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.280398/gov.uscourts.mad.280398.66.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">declined</a> to block the Office of Personnel Management’s “Fork in the Road” program, which gave two million federal workers the opportunity to quit and be paid through September. Due to his ruling, the window to accept the offer closed Wednesday at 7:20 p.m. ET after at least 75,000 workers took the deal. 
The American Federation of Government Employees and several other unions challenged the program, arguing that the offer violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). 
“The plaintiffs are unable to succeed on the merits of their two APA claims because they lack Article III standing and because this Court does not have subject matter jurisdiction over the claims asserted,” O’Toole said. 
The judge added that the unions did not have direct enough interest to challenge the program. 
“The plaintiffs here are not directly impacted by the directive. Instead, they allege that the directive subjects them to upstream effects including a diversion of resources to answer members’ questions about the directive, a potential loss of membership, and possible reputational harm,” he wrote. “The unions do not have the required direct stake in the Fork Directive, but are challenging a policy that affects others, specifically executive branch employees. This is not sufficient.&#8221;
McLaurine Pinover, a spokeswoman for the Office of Personnel Management, celebrated the ruling, saying that OPM was “pleased the court has rejected a desperate effort to strike down the Deferred Resignation Program.”
“There is no longer any doubt: the Deferred Resignation Program was both legal and a valuable option for federal employees,” she <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/02/12/us-news/federal-judge-allows-trump-to-push-forward-with-buyouts-for-government-workers/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> the New York Post. “This program was carefully designed, thoroughly vetted, and provides generous benefits so federal workers can plan for their futures.”
AFGE President Everett Kelley said the decision was “a setback in the fight for dignity and fairness for public servants.”
“We continue to maintain it is illegal to force American citizens who have dedicated their careers to public service to make a decision, in a few short days, without adequate information, about whether to uproot their families and leave their careers for what amounts to an unfunded IOU from Elon Musk,” Kelly added. 
The “fork” program was introduced on January 28, saying that significant cuts to the size of government were on the horizon and that OPM could not guarantee that everyone’s position would still be in place with incoming reforms. The offer paralleled a similar offer that Elon Musk, who is leading Trump&#8217;s &#8220;Department of Government Efficiency&#8221; (DOGE) project, offered to employees of Twitter, now X, when he took over the social media platform. 
Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1884601571347943773" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> government employees who took the offer from OPM would be able to do &#8220;whatever&#8221; they wanted for six months with full government pay and benefits.

Trump To Order Federal Job Cuts As Part Of Musk’s Downsizing

Judge Rejects Union Effort To Stop Trump’s Buyout Of Government Workers

Federal Government

Trump Administration

Unions

A federal judge on Thursday delayed the deadline for government workers to accept a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fork-in-the-road-trump-makes-offer-for-millions-of-federal-workers-to-resign" target="_blank" rel="noopener">proposal to resign</a> from the Trump administration as it seeks to slash the size of the federal bureaucracy.
U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. temporarily paused the expiration of the Trump administration’s offer for two million federal workers to quit with pay until September 30. The judge will hear arguments on Monday about the legality of the proposal, which was sent out by the Office of Personnel Management on January 28.
The original deadline for the offer was February 6 and at least 60,000 workers have <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/live-blog/trump-national-prayer-breakfast-live-updates-rcna190379" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reportedly</a> already taken up the offer.
“We are grateful to the Judge for extending the deadline so more federal workers who refuse to show up to the office can take the Administration up on this very generous, once-in-a-lifetime offer,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in response to the decision.
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) opposes the buyout and is looking to see it blocked, and the organization&#8217;s president, Everett Kelley, <a href="https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5130780-federal-workers-buyout-deadline-extension/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> he was “pleased” with the judge’s decision.
“We are pleased the court temporarily paused this deadline while arguments are heard about the legality of the deferred resignation program. We continue to believe this program violates the law, and we will continue to aggressively defend our members’ rights,” he said.
The January 28 message from OPM suggested that significant cuts were on the horizon and that it could not guarantee that everyone’s position would still be in place with incoming reforms.
The message sent to the workers was titled “A Fork in the Road,” and discussed four major “pillars” around which the Trump administration planned to build the federal workforce. These pillars included working in an office, focusing on excellence, cutting the size of federal agencies, and increasing standards of conduct.
“If you choose to remain in your current position, we thank you for your renewed focus on serving the American people to the best of your abilities and look forward to working together as part of an improved federal workforce,” the message said. “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 Trump administration is looking to actively cut back the scope of the federal bureaucracy and slash wasteful spending and programs.

US-POLITICS-TRUMP

Judge Pushes Deadline For Trump’s Government Buyout Proposal

Karoline Leavitt

U.S.

The Trump administration is offering to buy out millions of government workers if they resign ahead of plans to bring dramatic reforms and cuts to the sprawling federal bureaucracy. 
The Office of Personnel Management on Tuesday sent out an <a href="https://www.opm.gov/fork" target="_blank" rel="noopener">email</a> to two million federal workers offering to pay them until September 30 if they resign by February 6. The message from OPM suggested that significant cuts were on the horizon and that it could not guarantee that everyone&#8217;s position would still be in place with incoming reforms. 
&#8220;If you choose to remain in your current position, we thank you for your renewed focus on serving the American people to the best of your abilities and look forward to working together as part of an improved federal workforce,&#8221; the message said. &#8220;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.&#8221;
The message sent to the workers was titled “A Fork in the Road” and discussed four major “pillars” around which the Trump administration planned to build the federal workforce. These pillars included working in an office, focusing on excellence, cutting the size of federal agencies, and increasing standards of conduct.
“While a few agencies and even branches of the military are likely to see increases in the size of their workforce, the majority of federal agencies are likely to be downsized through restructurings, realignments, and reductions in force,” the message from OPM said. “These actions are likely to include the use of furloughs and the reclassification to at-will status for a substantial number of federal employees.”
The offer was not sent to military personnel, postal workers, or employees working in immigration enforcement or national security.
The move comes after President Donald Trump signed multiple executive orders to reform the federal bureaucracy, including instituting a federal hiring freeze, ordering all employees to show up for in-person work, and establishing an operation called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
&#8220;American taxpayers pay for the salaries of federal government employees, and therefore deserve employees working on their behalf who actually show up to work in our wonderful federal buildings, also paid for by taxpayers,&#8221; White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-administration-offer-federal-workers-buyouts-resign-rcna189661" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> NBC. &#8220;If they don’t want to work in the office and contribute to making America great again, then they are free to choose a different line of work, and the Trump Administration will provide a very generous payout of 8 months.&#8221;

President-Elect Donald Trump Meets Prince William In Paris Ahead Of Notre-Dame Reopening

‘Fork In The Road’: Trump Makes Offer For Millions Of Federal Workers To Resign

A Biden White House official “burrowed” into the permanent career workforce of the Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency, The Daily Wire has learned.
Taylor Carter-Disanto’s LinkedIn profile picture is a photo of her with Joe Biden, and its cover image is a gay pride flag with a black-power fist. But the most remarkable part of her profile is a new job: a career federal government position at the Department of Commerce she says she started in December and will continue through the Trump administration and beyond.
The placement of campaign and White House operatives and political appointees into civil service positions undermines Democrats’ claim that the civil service is sacrosanct and that Trump’s reform initiatives risk “politicizing” it.
Carter-Disanto worked for the Biden campaign, the Biden inaugural committee, and most importantly, the White House’s Presidential Personnel Office (PPO), which oversees the hiring and placement of political appointees.
In September 2021, she herself was named as a political appointee to the Department of Commerce, which the <a href="https://victoryinstitute.org/programs/political-appointments-program/lgbtq-appointments-in-the-biden-harris-administration/">LGBTQ+ Victory Initiative</a> said was part of its push to put gay activists in government. She previously worked for the LGBT Bar Association.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-866245" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/l1.png" alt="Taylor Carter-Disanto / LinkedIn" width="1214" height="1372" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/l1.png 1214w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/l1-265x300.png 265w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/l1-510x576.png 510w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/l1-768x868.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1214px) 100vw, 1214px" /></div>
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-866259" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/l2-1.png" alt="" width="1214" height="1121" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/l2-1.png 1214w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/l2-1-300x277.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/l2-1-624x576.png 624w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/l2-1-768x709.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1214px) 100vw, 1214px" /></div>
As Special Assistant to the National Director of the MBDA, the Commerce Department featured her on its website, saying “To truly embrace the complexities and beauty of intersectional identities takes time and introspection, but most importantly an understanding of how we got here. The political and cultural contributions of Black and Brown trans women are deeply relied on for the progression of the LGBTQ+ community.”
After a year in that job, she departed to work for the city of Baltimore as its “Deputy Director, Broadband and Digital Equity,” where she blamed <a href="https://statescoop.com/fccs-task-force-on-digital-discrimination-visits-baltimore/">1960s redlining for the internet in Baltimore being slow</a>.
Her LinkedIn says she ended that job in January 2025, though it says she returned to the Department of Commerce in December 2024 as part of MBDA’s “Strategic Initiatives Group.”
On January 23, she posted to LinkedIn, “I am honored to return to Minority Business Development Agency – U.S. Department of Commerce to continue my passion for enhancing economic prosperity for our country’s dynamic and resilient minority business community.”
She said 2024 brought “hardships” but that she planned to be part of the “solution” through her government job, and closed the post with a picture of her and Joe Biden.
Trump has said the government should not operate “equity” initiatives. But Carter-Disanto’s LinkedIn bio suggests she intends to do just that. She calls herself a “dedicated social and economic equity advocate” and “a policy wonk with a special focus on equity.”
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-866251" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/promo.jpeg" alt="Taylor Carter-Disanto / LinkedIn" width="1200" height="675" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/promo.jpeg 1200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/promo-300x169.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/promo-1024x576.jpeg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/promo-768x432.jpeg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /></div>
Carter-Disanto did not return a request for comment, nor did the Department of Commerce.
Federal ethics rules deter “burrowing” — the effort to embed political appointees into the next administration — because it could lead to political operatives subverting the next administration, or to a job being taken away from a career employee because Cabinet secretaries give it to a politically connected friend. A political appointee can only be converted to a permanent position with special permission from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
OPM did not return a request for comment on whether, under the Biden administration, it granted such permission for Carter-Disanto.
Carter-Disanto is the second former member of the Biden White House’s Presidential Personnel Office who The Daily Wire found to have joined the non-political federal workforce, suggesting that insider influence on the world of government personnel could have played a role.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-biden-admin-uses-loophole-to-put-kamala-transition-aide-in-trump-workforce">Elizabeth Peña</a> was a Biden PPO official and Labor Department appointee who left government to work for the Kamala Harris transition team, likely expecting a big political appointment if Harris won the presidency. Instead, after the election but before Trump’s inauguration, Labor Department officials placed her in an ostensibly non-political job that would not end with the administration.
Like Carter-Disanto, she also said she intended to advance “equity” with the job, and had also worked for the Biden campaign. The Trump administration <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/labor-department-fires-kamala-aide-exposed-by-the-daily-wire-for-burrowing-in-trump-workforce">fired her</a> after the exposé, with the Department of Labor saying it “is actively working to ensure no other political operatives” burrow into the civil service.
The Minority Business Development Agency was created in 1969 via executive order, but was made a permanent agency in 2021 via Joe Biden&#8217;s infrastructure law, which funded it at $110 million per year. That had a side effect of making its leader a presidentially-appointed position.
The bill <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3684/text">says</a> that the law &#8220;shall presume that the term &#8216;socially or economically disadvantaged individual&#8217; includes any individual who is Black or African American; Hispanic or Latino; American Indian or Alaska Native; Asian; Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander.&#8221;
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-866255" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/insta2.png" alt="Taylor Carter-Disanto / Instagram" width="2544" height="1622" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/insta2.png 2544w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/insta2-300x191.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/insta2-903x576.png 903w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/insta2-768x490.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/insta2-1536x979.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/insta2-2048x1306.png 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 2544px) 100vw, 2544px" /></div>

Taylor Carter-Disanto / LinkedIn

Another Biden White House Official ‘Burrowed’ Into The Federal Workforce Post-Election

Department of Commerce

Joe Biden

In addition to the thousands of political appointees Donald Trump will place in the government, there are 300 Senior Executive Service jobs that the Biden administration was in the process of filling, which Trump will now be able to fill, a Daily Wire review of government job ads found.
The SES, as it is known, is what many mean when they think of the “deep state.” They are career civil servants who are paid over $200,000 a year, and are often involved in high-level policy, yet are considered permanent government employees whose term does not end with a president. They are difficult to fire, typically Democrats, and have their own lobbying organization.
But the SES could be a valuable resource for Trump, giving him hundreds of extra high-level jobs to fill, beyond the approximately 3,000 political appointees who comprise a small fraction of the federal workforce. The SES level is a crucial layer that could either cause Trump’s policies to filter from executive suites to the rank-and-file, or isolate political appointees and obstruct their efforts.
If Trump exerts his influence on the hiring of these employees, it could have a lasting effect on the government that outlives his presidency. On his first day in office, he signaled his intent to do just that, signing an executive order called &#8220;<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-accountability-for-career-senior-executives/">Restoring Accountability for Career Senior Executives</a>.&#8221;
&#8220;SES officials have enormous influence over the functioning of the Federal Government,&#8221; it said. &#8220;Because SES officials wield significant governmental authority, they must serve at the pleasure of the President.&#8221; It said Executive Resource Boards, which evaluate resumes and make hiring recommendations for SES jobs, should be reconstituted with majority political appointees. Another executive order issued a hiring freeze to prevent the bureaucracy from racing to fill the jobs without Trump&#8217;s input.
But the fact that 300 jobs are currently vacant gives the Trump team the ability to fill them quickly and supercharge the administration&#8217;s early efforts.
They include top HR roles, a position that could have a cascading effect, ensuring that other hires won’t obstruct the administration. (Trump last week requested the resignation of the State Department’s HR chief, and she <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/career-state-department-hr-official-retires-following-trumps-demand-for-resignations" target="_blank" rel="noopener">retired</a>, despite being a career employee.) Here are some of those jobs:
<ul>
<li>DOJ: Director of Human Resources</li>
<li>ICE: Deputy Chief Human Capital Officer</li>
<li>Citizenship and Immigration Services: Head of HR</li>
<li>Customs and Border Protection: Executive Director, Workforce Care</li>
<li>Department of the Interior: Deputy Associate Director for Human Resources</li>
<li>Centers for Disease Control: Principal Deputy Director, Office of Human Resources</li>
<li>Office of Personnel Management: Director, Office of Civil Rights</li>
</ul>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/celebrities-cheer-for-president-trumps-inauguration-god-bless-america"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-862665 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/INAUG_MERCHBANNER-6-2-1024x391.png" alt="" width="1024" height="391" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/INAUG_MERCHBANNER-6-2-1024x391.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/INAUG_MERCHBANNER-6-2-300x115.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/INAUG_MERCHBANNER-6-2-768x293.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/INAUG_MERCHBANNER-6-2-1536x587.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/INAUG_MERCHBANNER-6-2-2048x782.png 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
The jobs also include slots for Inspectors General, which find waste, fraud, and abuse in government. IGs could, in effect, function like the Department of Government Efficiency — except that they are empowered to make criminal referrals.
<ul>
<li>Federal Trade Commission: Inspector General</li>
<li>Homeland Security: Assistant Inspector General for Audits of Emergency Management &amp; Preparedness</li>
<li>Justice: Deputy Assistant Inspector General for Audits</li>
<li>Housing and Urban Development: OIG Chief of Staff and OIG Deputy Assistant Inspector General for Audit</li>
<li>Labor: Deputy Assistant Inspector General for Audit</li>
</ul>
They include jobs overseeing how money is spent:
<ul>
<li>Treasury: Deputy Assistant Commissioner for Fiscal Accounting</li>
<li>Treasury: Director, Office of State and Local Finance</li>
<li>IRS: Chief Procurement Officer</li>
<li>USAID: Deputy Chief Financial Officer</li>
<li>Defense: Deputy General Counsel (Fiscal)</li>
<li>HHS ACF Deputy Director, Grants Management</li>
<li>NASA Chief Financial Officer</li>
<li>NASA Director of Procurement</li>
</ul>
They give the Trump administration a head start in transforming the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) back into an agency focused on securing the border:
<ul>
<li>DHS: Associate Deputy Principal Leal Advisor for Enforcement and Litigation</li>
<li>DHS: Director of Homeland Identity Intelligence Center</li>
<li>Customs &amp; Border Patrol: Executive Director of Financial Operations</li>
<li>DHS: Office of Health Security Chief of Staff</li>
<li>DOJ Immigration Review: Regional Deputy Chief Immigration Judge</li>
<li>DHS: Director, Open Source Intelligence Division</li>
<li>DHS: Several Chief Patrol Agents and Chief Counsels</li>
<li>Secret Service: Chief Administrative Officer</li>
</ul>
At the Social Security Administration, there are multiple Deputy Associate Commissioner positions open. At the State Department, whose career employees are notoriously left-leaning, a Managing Director career position is open. Trump can select the Army’s advisor to the United States Ambassador at NATO, avoiding the type of deep state fiasco captured by James O’Keefe in a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pentagon-aide-terminated-after-boasting-about-conspiring-with-retired-generals-to-stop-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recent sting</a>.
High-level positions dealing with labor are open, and may no longer be filled with a Democrat unionist:
<ul>
<li>National Labor Relations Board Regional Director</li>
<li>Department of Labor: Deputy Assistant Secretary &#8211; Operations and Management</li>
</ul>
The Deputy Director of Grants and Debarment at the Environmental Protection Agency could — if selected by a Republican president  — stop the flow of grants to ineffective “greenwashing” projects and left-wing groups.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is hiring 17 regional deputy executive directors, who, if hired with the new administration in mind, could lead to a national transformation of the agency, which became among the most <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-admin-wants-more-black-veterans-declared-mentally-disabled-in-the-name-of-equity" target="_blank" rel="noopener">far-left</a> in the Biden era.
The currently open position for HHS <a href="https://www.usajobs.gov/job/818735300" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health</a> (paying up to $222,000 with telework eligible) illustrates the power of the SES; the job directly advises the Secretary, yet it has DEI baked in, and the president simply inherits the choice of his predecessor. Applications were accepted from November 15 to November 29, but a hiring decision still hasn’t been made, according to USAJobs.gov.
You can sort and search the 300+ jobs below:
<iframe loading="lazy" src="https://dailywireinteractives.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ses_vacancies.html" width="100%" height="700px" frameborder="0"></iframe>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/feds-look-to-hire-up-to-1200-new-dei-bureaucrats-before-trump-takes-office" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Feds Look To Hire Up To 1,200 New DEI Bureaucrats Before Trump Takes Office</a>

President-Elect Trump Meets With Republican Governors At Mar-A-Lago

Senior Career Vacancies Mean Trump Can Fill 300 Key Permanent Jobs

Deep State

A Democrat operative who worked for the Biden White House personnel office, as a political appointee to the Department of Labor, and for the Kamala Harris transition team, has been hired by the Department of Labor in a role that will continue in the Trump administration using a loophole, The Daily Wire has learned.
Elizabeth Peña was a Biden political appointee to the Labor Department&#8217;s Bureau of International Labor Affairs, where she worked from October 2021 to October 2024, first as a Special Assistant and then as Policy Advisor, according to her LinkedIn.
From October to December 2024, she served as senior manager of vetting for the Harris transition team. Then in January, she returned to the Labor Department — this time as International Relations Officer, not a political appointee.
In a LinkedIn post announcing her new position on Monday, she said she planned to use it to promote “equity,” a left-wing policy opposed by the incoming president.
“I’m thrilled to announce that I have returned to the Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) as an International Relations Officer! This new role marks a continuation of my journey to protect and promote labor rights globally. Over the past few years, I’ve had the privilege of working on issues that matter deeply to me and at ILAB, I look forward to collaborating with partners at home and abroad to uphold the principles of dignity, equity, and justice in the workplace,” she wrote.
Peña knows the importance of having people with the right political leanings in the right jobs — and the rules around it — because placing Democrats in key posts has been a large part of her career in politics. From September 2020 to January 2021, she worked on the Biden transition team as it selected Democrats to fill top jobs. From January to September 2021, she worked in the White House’s influential Presidential Personnel Office, which does the same thing.
Prior to that, she worked for Beto O’Rourke’s presidential campaign, where she “authored over 500 vetting reports analyzing employees,” according to her <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-pe%C3%B1a-jd/details/experience/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LinkedIn</a>.
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Federal ethics rules frown on “burrowing,” as the effort to embed political appointees into the next administration is known. According to a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, a political appointee can only be converted to a permanent position with special permission from the Office of Personnel Management.
The Congressional Research Service said that’s because of concerns about whether the person was hired because they were close to top leaders instead of being the best-qualified, that it takes a job away from an existing civil servant who may have wanted a promotion, and “that the individual who is converted to a career position may seek to undermine the work of the new Administration.” All of that, the Congressional Research Service says, “may increase the tension between political and career staff.”
Democrats have lashed out at Trump’s suggestion that government employees are often liberals who may seek to thwart him — a suggestion that the Biden PPO alum’s appointment makes harder to dispute.
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), the incoming ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, previously condemned the idea of political operatives moving into the federal workforce, <a href="https://connolly.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=4747">saying</a> he was “committed to protecting the civil service from partisan attacks and attempts to replace qualified experts with political loyalists.”
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The Labor Department appears to have used a loophole to avoid Peña showing up on a list of “burrowed” employees, which under the law must be furnished to Congress. A Labor Department spokesperson told The Daily Wire “Peña was hired as a Term employee at the Bureau of International Labor Affairs. A Term employee is a time-limited position that does not confer career status, distinguishing it from both political appointee roles and permanent career positions.”
An International Relations Officer job with “term” status was <a href="https://www.usajobs.gov/job/820877000" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posted</a> from November 26 through December 3. It showed a salary of $117,962 to $153,354 and a term of three years, meaning she would serve for the bulk of the Trump administration.
Also in November, a permanent International Relations Officer job was posted, then <a href="https://www.usajobs.gov/job/819155500" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cancelled</a>. The Labor Department did not answer a question about whether the term-limited job was created for Peña and displaced a standard permanent position. A Daily Wire review of federal job ads showed that the bureau listed International Relations Officer jobs more than 80 times since 2019, and none of them were “term” jobs.
The job ad tracks closely with Peña’s resume, saying the successful applicant must have experience “developing labor-related policy or program recommendations for senior leadership” and speak Spanish.
The Labor Department spokesperson indicated that the “term” classification sidestepped typical anti-burrowing procedures, saying “If Ms. Peña applies for and is selected to transition into a career position in the future&#8230; her application will undergo the Office of Personnel Management&#8217;s (OPM) review process required for all former political appointees.”
The Biden administration has taken other personnel measures that could make it more difficult for Trump to identify and remove partisan operatives from the workforce. That includes hiring permanent employees to work on DEI initiatives — roles Trump is likely to abolish. Federal agencies may change their titles in an attempt to hide the target.
A source close to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said that the agency has taken steps to change the title of its Chief Equity Officer, Dia D. Harris, to Senior Adviser. HHS did not return a request for comment.
The Chief Equity Officer job is not listed in the Plum Book, implying it is a career position. Yet employees originally hired to do DEI are likely partisan in ways that directly contradict Trump’s agenda, and are likely to remain that way regardless of title.
Harris’s LinkedIn says “I allow, permit, &amp; encourage U 2 b as authentic as possible… I authentically live as an Unapologetically Blackity Black Black Man!”
As Chief Equity Officer “I direct the implementation of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives, assist in the establishment of DEIA goals, and execute agency-wide action plans,” his LinkedIn says, adding that he was previously a self-employed “Inclusion Equality &amp; Diversity Consultant.”
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Elizabeth Peña with Joe Biden / LinkedIn

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