Trump ends federal leadership program, cutting off key talent pipeline; The Washington Post, February 20, 2025

Olivia George, The Washington Post; Trump ends federal leadership program, cutting off key talent pipeline

[Kip Currier: "So we do not lose heart." 2 Cor. 4:16.

Trump, Vance, Musk, and others in his circle want the American people to despair and believe that our government is irreparably broken. [Read/Listen to Ezra Klein's 2/7/25 New York Times interview with Kara Swisher "What Elon Musk Wants"] That we as a country, committed to the bedrock principle E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One), are irrevocably divided. That we are not indivisible, in contravention of our Pledge of Allegiance (one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.) 

The damage being done every day by the Trump administration is tragic, uncharitable, and vengeful.

Yet, we must and will persevere as a nation. We must build stronger guardrails to protect against this kind of unilateral, monarchical destruction of federal employees, programs, and agencies that help people, provide deserved opportunities, strengthen our democracy and the free world, and present hope and information to those yearning for freedom and self-determination.

Take heart. We will rebuild our government when this regime has ended.]

[Excerpt] 

"The Trump administration ended the Presidential Management Fellows Program in a late-night executive order Wednesday, axing a decades-old initiative that has long been celebrated as a pipeline to draw talent into civil service careers.

The two-year, full-time fellowship brings recent graduate students into agencies across the government with pay, benefits, training and mentorship. It bills itself as “the premier leadership development program” and has helped thousands of graduates get into government roles since its founding in 1977.

President Donald Trump instructed the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to “promptly terminate” the program in the executive order, which targeted “elements of the Federal bureaucracy” that he had “determined are unnecessary.” The order also eliminated or dramatically diminished a handful of other programs and federal advisory committees, including the U.S. Institute of Peace, which works to prevent and resolve violent conflict, and the U.S. African Development Foundation, which invests in African grassroots enterprises.

“This is one of the most unsettling, tragic pieces of news yet,” said Sean O’Keefe, a member of the presidential management program’s inaugural class who went on to become the NASA administrator under President George W. Bush. “This is a firing of convenience. They are looking for a headcount reduction; there is nothing qualitative about this.”