Lisa Desjardins:
This came down Friday after Elon Musk basically was exiting from government. And this is part of sort of that idea of DOGE trying to cement these effects after he’s gone. It’s important.
I read through these, and these changes would have major cultural and workplace place effects in them. So let’s look through them in multiple ways. First of all, these new federal hiring rules would mean that agencies could no longer collect or give out data on the race or gender of the work force. They would be encouraged, in fact, told they should recruit from state schools, religious schools, religious groups, the military, and also some other groups like 4-H that are thought to be more rural around the country.
Now, instead of filling out the question as it is now, applications, would have to fill out four short essays. Two of those would have to deal with the Constitution, but one, every applicant would have to answer a question about how they would comply and support President Trump’s executive orders.
Finally, for senior jobs, they are saying there will be a course given that you would have to pay for if you choose to sort of fast-track yourself to become a senior executive, and that course would train people on Trump’s executive orders. So, of course, there are Republicans who say, hey, this is great, government’s too elite as it is, we need to look at state schools and others.
But there are other people who say, no, this is politicizing the federal work force in a way that career servants should not be politicized. So it is something that’s happening now, and it’s something we need to watch carefully.
