موقع وجه أفريقيا موقع وجه أفريقيا هو موقع مهتم بمتابعة التطورات في القارة الأفريقية
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Most of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet members were confirmed by the Senate in time for his first Cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
Four members requiring Senate approval had not yet been confirmed, including US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who was voted in by the Senate the same day.
It is common for presidents to convene the first meeting while the Senate approval process continues. In Trump’s first term, he convened his first Cabinet meeting on March 13, 2017, before convening the full Cabinet later that year in June.
Trump administration will begin converting federal agencies’ most senior level workers to political appointees
In the midst of the mass firings of thousands of federal workers, the Trump administration is taking another step to reshape federal agencies by increasing the number of employees who would be loyal to the president’s policy agenda.
In a memo, sent to to agency heads on Monday, the Office of Personnel Management instructed the agencies to begin the process of reclassifying top career positions as political positions appointed by the president.
This move would potentially impact thousands of current career positions government wide. By law, there must be at least 3,571 career reserved positions government wide, OPM says, but that there are now more than double that amount.
The Senior Executives Association, a union that represents the interests of career federal executives, puts the number of these workers at more than 8,000.
“The Trump Administration is now making moves to further politicize the senior levels of our government by converting nonpartisan executive positions to jobs where he can place loyalists and partisans. This is yet one more big step towards the return to the spoils system, which will lead to corruption and incompetence in our government,” said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan organization focused on the federal government.
The memo points to over 200 positions involved in policy making decisions that are currently handled by career executives rather than political appointees.
“Major policies of the President or agency head are filtered through appointees with reduced democratic accountability,” Charles Ezell, OPM’s acting director wrote in the memo, adding the positions were not intended “to supplant that leadership.”
OPM instructs agencies to respond with their own proposals by March 24.
