Food and Drug Administration officials are mounting fierce resistance to President Donald Trump’s executive order last month that would take away certain civil service and due process protections from career federal employees who make policy, Politico reported on Tuesday.
FDA officials view the executive order as setting the basis for the president to purge senior health officials he sees as disloyal and replace them with political allies in a second Trump term.
Several top FDA officials have voiced sharp opposition directly to Commissioner Stephen Hahn at the prospect of determining which employees would be eligible, said two health officials with knowledge of the matter.
Over the past few months, Trump’s inner circle has clashed with the FDA over attempts to fulfill the president’s promise of a coronavirus vaccine before Election Day.
The sweeping order has also generated opposition from the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents career officials and is suing to rescind the mandate.
Ronald Sanders, the Trump administration-appointed head of an advisory council on civil service, resigned to protest the policy, saying “it was accountability more to political loyalty than it was high performance. So that was my red line.”
Health agencies are especially concerned about the order, according to a half-dozen officials across the Department of Health and Human Services, because their work to battle the pandemic has led to clashes with Trump’s efforts to downplay the threat and quickly reopen the economy.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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