Michael D. Shear WASHINGTON — Across the vast federal bureaucracy, Donald J. Trump’s arrival in the White House has spread anxiety, frustration, fear and resistance among many of the two million nonpolitical civil servants who say they work for the public, not a particular president. At the Environmental Protection Agency, a group of scientists strategized this past week about how to slow-walk President Trump’s environmental orders without being fired. At the Treasury Department, civil servants ...
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Benjamin Wallace-Wells Last Saturday morning, a Canadian woman named Fadwa Alaoui left her home in Brossard, across the St. Lawrence River from Montreal, and drove an hour southeast, to the border crossing at Highgate Springs, Vermont. Alaoui was travelling with her two young children and an adult cousin. They planned to spend the day shopping in Burlington. At the crossing, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers asked Alaoui, who was born in Morocco and wears a hijab, for the password ...
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Meredith Somers Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) is hoping to “pour sunshine” on whether or not President Donald Trump is breaking the law regarding the Old Post Office building and his stake in the Washington, D.C. luxury hotel that’s leasing the property from the General Services Administration. Speaking to Federal News Radio on Feb. 8, the same day members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform requested unredacted documents related to the lease, Connolly said the goal of obtai...
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Today, eight members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform sent a letter to the General Services Administration (GSA) seeking documents regarding how the GSA is addressing President Donald Trump’s apparent breach of the Old Post Office lease agreement. GSA provided a response to a previous letter sent by Ranking Member Cummings, Rep. Peter Defazio, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and Reps. Gerry Connolly and André Carson. GSA explai...
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Jory Heckman A long-awaited bill to reform the U.S. Postal Service’s troubled finances could have the momentum it needs to make it to President Donald Trump’s desk after four major postal unions voiced their support for the legislation at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing Tuesday. National Association of Letter Carriers President Fredric Rolando told the committee that his union, along with the American Postal Workers Union, the National Rural Letter Carriers Association ...
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Mohana Ravindranath At least one Democratic lawmaker plans to continue his efforts to modernize federal IT, despite the administration change. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., said he plans to reintroduce a bill that would set up working capital funds in federal agencies to support their technology modernization projects. It would also create a governmentwide fund other agencies could apply to for additional funding. Tony Scott, the federal chief information officer under the Obama administration, ha...
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Today, House Oversight and Government Reform Vice-Ranking Member Gerry Connolly (D-VA) sent a letter to all Cabinet agencies requesting information regarding each agency’s use of nondisclosure agreements. The letter was also signed by Government Operations Subcommittee Chairman Mark Meadows. In the letter, Connolly and Meadows write that “the law requires any agency using a nondisclosure policy, form, or agreement to post the statement on the agency website alone with relevant Executive Orders a...
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Democratic Members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs today reminded the Administration that State Department personnel who dissent from policy are protected by law and sought assurances that State Department personnel would not be subject to harassment or retribution for offering dissenting viewpoints. In a letter to the President, the Members expressed concern over comments from White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer that diplomats who disagree with Administration policy should “get wi...
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By Pete Kasperowicz Rep. Gerry Connolly on Tuesday reintroduced legislation aimed at giving federal workers a 3.2 percent pay raise, even as the Trump administration is looking to cut federal spending and reduce the government workforce. The Virginia Democrat said that even before President Trump, Republicans had "bullied" federal workers by blocking raises. Federal employees received no raises for a few years early in the Obama administration, and only recently were given raises of just 1 or 2...
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Today, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings and Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, Ranking Member and Vice Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter to the White House Counsel requesting information about disturbing reports that officials from the Trump Transition Team threatened to remove Inspectors General after the inauguration. “If these reports are accurate, the actions by Trump Administration officials demonstrate a troubling pattern of misguided and politically-moti...
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