President Donald Trump’s administration is in the process of purging more than 1,000 Biden appointees from their government roles, and has already announced several high-profile firings, placed all DEI employees on paid leave and reportedly reassigned more than a dozen veteran Justice Department officials.
US President Donald Trump delivers his inaugural address after being sworn in as the 47th president ... [+]
The Trump administration placed all diversity, equity and inclusion employees on paid leave Tuesday, a day after issuing an executive ordered designed to dismantle DEI policies across the federal government, and at least 20 senior Justice Department officials have also been reassigned, the Associated Press reported, citing unnamed officials, as Trump takes aim at the agency he has accused of bringing politically motivated prosecutions against him.
Trump’s personnel office is in the process of “identifying and removing over a thousand presidential Appointees from the previous Administration,” he wrote Tuesday on Truth Social, naming four appointees and telling them “YOU’RE FIRED!” using his “Apprentice” catchphrase.
Trump said he dismissed celebrity chef José Andrés from the President’s Council on Sports, retired Gen. Mark Milley from the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms from the President’s Export Council, and his former Iran envoy, Brian Hook, from the Wilson Center for Scholars think tank.
Coast Guard Commandant Linda Fagan, who was two years into her four-year term and was not among the terminations Trump identified on Truth Social, was also terminated Monday by Acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamin Huffman, according to multiple reports.
Though Huffman reportedly cited performance reasons for Fagan’s termination, Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., and former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., took aim at Fagan last year in a letter deriding the Coast Guard’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity inclusivity training, which they referred to as “indoctrination training.”
Andrés and Bottoms said they had already resigned before Trump’s announcement, and while Trump didn’t state his reasons for the terminations, Andrés, Bottoms and Milley have openly feuded with Trump, though it’s unclear why Hook was fired.
Andrés backed out of a restaurant deal with Trump after he disparaged Mexicans, sparking a two-year legal battle, and Bottoms criticized Trump’s incendiary rhetoric toward protesters in the wake of George Floyd’s death in 2020.
Milley—who was pre-emptively pardoned by former President Joe Biden Monday and whose portrait was removed from the Pentagon—called Trump “the most dangerous person to this country” and a “fascist to the core” in Bob Woodward’s “War.”
Federal advisory council roles are typically unpaid positions with limited authority. Biden also asked some Trump-era appointees to leave their positions or be terminated, including all 18 of his appointees to the boards of national military academies.
The terminations were among a string of actions Trump took on his first day in office, including signing a flurry of executive orders to implement his campaign promises on immigration, energy, TikTok and more. Other executive orders addressed federal employees, including one that suspends hiring and another directing agencies to stop work-from-home programs. Trump is expected to implement broad cuts to federal bureaucracy, likely with the help of the new Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency. Trump also pardoned all but 14 people convicted or charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, effectively dismissing more than 1,500 cases or convictions. The Senate is in the process of holding hearings for Trump’s nominees for cabinet-level positions, and Senate committees this week greenlit Trump’s Defense Secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth, and Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent.