As President Donald Trump moves to slash the size of the federal workforce, his administration unveiled a plan to ensure that any new hires are “patriotic Americans” who vow to advance the president’s policy priorities.
The White House and the agency that serves as the government’s human resources arm Thursday released directives for departments to use when recruiting employees in a memo that represents a dramatic shift in federal hiring procedures.
The administration’s “merit hiring plan” comes after Trump ordered a revamp to the federal hiring process on his first day in office. The resulting plan issued this week says it aims to ensure that “only the most talented, capable and patriotic Americans” are hired by the government.
The “overly complex Federal hiring system overemphasized discriminatory ‘equity’ quotas and too often resulted in the hiring of unfit, unskilled bureaucrats,” says the memo authored by Vince Haley, assistant to the president for domestic policy, and Charles Ezell, the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.
