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Atlantic
5 days ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
The New Danger in Trump's Washington: Honoring Federal Employees
In some ways, last night's Sammie awards—also known as the Oscars for federal employees —proceeded just as they do every year. In a packed auditorium a few blocks from the White House, government luminaries handed out medals to some of the nation's most talented civil servants, recognizing groundbreaking research, major improvements in customer service, and top-notch stewardship of taxpayer money. The ceremony, however, was unusual in one respect: Hardly any of the honorees took the stage to accept their awards. Instead, they stayed at their seats, away from the cameras. Public recognition of their good work in Donald Trump's government, organizers feared, could cost them their jobs. Such is the climate of fear that has pervaded the federal workforce during the second Trump administration, which has moved to shut down entire agencies, shrink the government through mass layoffs and inducements to quit, and crack down on dissent. The Partnership for Public Service, the nonprofit that awards the Sammies, was determined to hold the ceremony, but it did not want to put its honorees in additional jeopardy. 'The sensitivity is real,' Max Stier, the partnership's CEO, told me. 'We did not want to see them harmed in any way for being recognized for their work.' At least one federal employee who organizers wanted to honor was told by supervisors to not accept the award, Stier said. He called the administration's assault on the civil service 'a five-alarm fire.' Past Sammie ceremonies—the awards' full name is the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals—have hardly been controversial. Administrations of both parties have participated in the black-tie event since its debut in 2002, sending Cabinet secretaries and other high-ranking officials to serve as presenters and laud the achievements of their underlings. TV-news stars including CBS's John Dickerson and PBS's Judy Woodruff have taken turns as emcees. (The selection committee this year included Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic.) The evening is the one night a year when largely unheralded public servants are feted. For many years, the nonprofit partnership operated inside the Washington establishment. It has remained studiously nonpartisan and worked closely with every presidential transition since George W. Bush, including, initially, the first Trump campaign. But the escalation of Trump's attacks on federal employees has forced the partnership to take up a post, somewhat uncomfortably, in the opposition. Stier has fought the president's efforts to convert thousands of nonpartisan civil servants into political appointees, a shift that he says would revive the discredited 'spoils system' of 19th-century America. In turn, Trump allies have labeled Stier 'a Democrat activist' because of his past work as a lawyer in the Clinton administration. He was also on Bill Clinton's defense team when the president was impeached over his affair with Monica Lewinsky, then a White House intern. The first Trump administration took part in the Sammies, but Stier said the partnership did not reach out this time around. 'All the signals were that they were undermining excellence' rather than recognizing or honoring it, he said. 'Therefore we did not believe we could do that.' As a result, the event felt at times like a reunion of a government in exile. Although the ceremony did include a taped appearance by a former George W. Bush chief of staff, Joshua Bolten, former Democratic officials were overrepresented. At one point, a former Barack Obama chief of staff, Denis McDonough, spoke alongside Jeff Zients, who was Joe Biden's most recent chief of staff. At another, one of Obama's Treasury secretaries, Timothy Geithner, appeared with Biden's, Janet Yellen. The Sammies usually take place in September, with a smaller event in the spring to announce finalists. But Stier decided to move up the celebration this year. He wasn't sure how many of the honorees would still be working for the federal government in September. 'We need the public to understand that this is urgent,' Stier said. 'We cannot operate under the same timeline, because the destruction is happening so quickly.' To guard against reprisal, the honorees sat in the audience and stood when their names were called, rather than appearing onstage to talk about their work in acceptance speeches. (The ceremony will air on some PBS stations next month.) The partnership appeared torn between recognizing the recipients publicly—none of their identities were hidden—and protecting them from any punishment if officials in the Trump administration objected to their remarks or believed they were making a political statement by standing in a literal spotlight. Although the partnership has traditionally been eager to make honorees available for interviews, a spokesperson this year said some were reluctant to speak publicly 'given the current environment.' I did talk with Dr. Laura Cheever, who received a Sammie for her decades of work managing federal programs combatting and treating HIV/AIDS. She retired in December—it was 'long-planned,' she told me. She was now freer to speak, but she said she might have been at risk had she stayed, because she had signed a letter stating that recipients of federal HIV/AIDS money should be able to provide gender-affirming care to their clients—a position at odds with the Trump administration's moves to block transgender-health services. Cheever told me she thought the partnership's efforts to shield its honorees from retaliation were necessary. Inside the government, she said, 'people are working aggressively not to call attention to themselves or the work that they're doing. They're just trying to do their work.' This year's awards honored achievements across a wide swath of the government, many in areas targeted by DOGE or threatened by cuts Trump has proposed to Congress. An employee with the all-but-defunct USAID, Kathleen Kirsch, was recognized for leading efforts to help Ukraine rebuild its energy infrastructure after attacks by Russia. The IRS's Maya Bretzius received a medal for reducing wait times in the agency's call center. 'Thanks, Maya, for making calls to the IRS a little less, shall we say, taxing,' McDonough joked in his speech. Others won awards for speedily cutting checks for COVID-era relief during the first Trump administration as well as for recovering fraudulent payments. Trump's name was not uttered during the hour-long program. But before and after the ceremony, the pall cast by his cuts to the workforce dominated. Attendees commiserated over the intrusions of DOGE and a job market suddenly stuffed with fired federal workers or those looking for a way out of the government. One attendee described a 'heaviness' in his Virginia neighborhood, a suburb populated by federal workers who either had lost their jobs or feared losing them. A cancer scientist told me about research he had worked on for decades that was now at risk of losing funding. 'There's just sort of a miasma of concern that overrides everything else,' Cheever said, describing morale among her friends who are still in the government. 'It's like walking on eggshells all the time, which is just not a very comfortable place to be.' One Sammie honoree did take the stage last night—the federal employee of the year, Dave Lebryk. But his award, too, carried reminders of a civil service under siege. Lebryk was recognized for his many years as the Treasury Department official responsible for the government's payment system. Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, he oversaw trillions of dollars in annual disbursements—including the regular checks that go to Social Security recipients and veterans—while maintaining the security of a system that contains confidential information for millions of Americans. Lebryk has even seen the gold at Fort Knox. 'It really does exist. It's there,' he quipped during his speech. But in late January, he ended his 35-year career in government, resigning rather than hand over access to Treasury's sensitive payment system to Elon Musk's lieutenants at DOGE. That act of resistance helped to explain his Sammie medal, as well as his willingness to publicly accept it: The federal employee of the year is, in fact, no longer a federal employee.
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
As summer begins, GRPS renovation projects ‘kicking into full speed'
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Thursday marks the last day of classes for students at Grand Rapids Public Schools. While they may be eager to begin summer vacation, administrators at GRPS are gearing up for a busy summer of their own — starting with renovations to the old Sigsbee Elementary building, which will soon become Southeast Career Pathways. The building, located on the corner of Fuller and Logan, is the first to receive funding from the $7 million is being invested to revamp the space that hasn't housed students in the district in over 10 years. Dark walls are being painted lighter, larger windows are being installed to bring in more daylight and new air conditioning systems — soon to be a hallmark of each building in the district — have also been installed. Upgrades will be complete in late July, but there's plenty more planned elsewhere in the district — including resurfacing Houseman and Briggs Fields and major updates to a number of other buildings. It's a , but leaders say it all starts at the former Sigsbee Elementary. GRPS future plans include security upgrades, electric buses 'This is the first major renovation project of the Reimagine GRPS with Us bond,' said Luke Stier, director of communications for the district. 'We want to create new, inspirational, flexible learning spaces, and that's what this project does.' The includes a wide range of projects that leaders say looks to create a more equitable district. Upgrades include a new environmental academy at Ken-O-Sha Park and expanding the existing Riverside Middle School to become a pre-K through 12th grade Montessori school. The district has also committed to installing secured entryways at each of its schools. 'This is really where it's kicking into full speed,' Stier said. 'It's renovation projects, building projects. It's also work across our district to improve things like transportation. We've seen big improvements throughout this year with on time performance. Really working at that from all aspects to create a better GRPS for all our scholars and staff.' GRPS approves plan to build new school at Aberdeen site The $7 million worth of renovations to create Southeast Career Pathways are just the tip of the iceberg. The Reimagine GRPS with Us bond will ultimately inject over $300 million into the district over the next few years. 'It's an exciting year,' Stier said. 'It's work that takes our entire team, our families, our community to come together to reimage GRPS. It's work that's well underway, and we're excited to see it continue.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Meet the nominees for Press-Citizen's Athletes of the Week, April 7-13
Meet the nominees for Press-Citizen's Athletes of the Week, April 7-13 The Iowa high school tennis season got underway this past week while soccer and track and field also headlined a full week of action. Here are the nominees for the Iowa City Press-Citizen's high school Athletes of the Week for April 7-13. readers vote to decide this week's winners. Voting closes at 8 p.m. Thursday. Advertisement Athletes are listed in alphabetical order by last name. Girls Caitlyn Bell, Jr., Iowa City Regina Bell helped Regina soccer pick up its second win of the season with a 2-1 victory over Northeast on April 7. She scored a goal against the Rebels. Stella Demarest, Soph., Iowa City High Demarest scored for the first time this season during Iowa City High soccer's 4-4 tie with Solon on April 10. The second-year Little Hawk scored two goals against the Spartans. Kate Shafer, Sr., Solon Shafer earned a pair of top-five finishes at the Williamsburg Co-Ed Invitational on April 8. The thrower placed second with a personal record in discus (123 feet, nine inches). She placed fourth in the shot put (36 feet, 4.50 inches). Marie Stier, Sr., Iowa City West Stier earned a hard-fought singles win during the Iowa City West tennis team's 7-2 win over Dubuque Hempstead on April 8. Advertisement Stier dropped the first set, 4-6, and clinched the second set, 6-3. She then secured the third set (1-0 (10-3)). Stier also earned a doubles victory with teammate Sasha Postnikov. Erin Quinn, Sr., Iowa City Liberty Quinn recorded her first varsity goal during Liberty's 3-1 win over North Scott on April 10. She received a pass from teammate Callie Stanley to score Liberty's second goal of the night. Boys Solon senior Caleb Bock is a nominee for boys Athlete of the Week. Caleb Bock, Sr., Solon Bock earned a first-place finish for Solon track and field at the Clear Creek Amana boys invitational on April 10. Bock placed first in the long jump (20 feet, 5.5 inches). Joey Dains, Sr., Clear Creek Amana Dains won gold at the Clear Creek Amana boys invitational. Advertisement The fourth-year Clipper placed first in the 200 meters with a time of 22.33. Harel Gameti, Sr., Iowa City West Gameti earned a pair of top-three finishes at the Clear Creek Amana boys invitational. He placed first in the 100 meters (11.22) and third in the 200 meters (22.85). Bernard Grant, Sr., Iowa City High Grant earned gold for Iowa City High track and field at the Cedar Falls Co-ed meet on April 10. He placed first in the high jump with a leap of six feet, two inches. Collin Weis, Jr., Iowa City Liberty Weis found the back of the net during Iowa City Liberty soccer's 3-0 shutout over Iowa City West on April 10. Advertisement It was his first goal of the season. Marc Ray is the high school sports reporter for the Iowa City Press-Citizen. He can be reached at MARay@ , and on X, formerly Twitter, at @themarcszn. This article originally appeared on Iowa City Press-Citizen: Vote: Iowa City Press-Citizen's Athletes of the Week, April 7-13
Washington Post
11-04-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
Optimism lives despite Trump's ‘arson of our public infrastructure'
Max Stier might keep a closer eye on federal agencies and their employees than anyone else not in government. A former employee of all three federal branches who worked for Democrats and Republicans, Stier is the founding president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that promotes good governance. Among its projects are the annual Best Places to Work in the Federal Government rankings and the Service to America Medals, a.k.a. the Sammies, which honor federal workers.
New York Times
05-04-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Trump Is on Shaky Legal Ground With Mass Layoffs at H.H.S., Experts Say
A 'policy lab' that generates ideas to improve mental health. An office that studies the effects of smoking. A team of scientists and public health experts who focus on birth defects. All three are programs in the Department of Health and Human Services that were created by Congress, which funds them. And all three have been hollowed out by mass layoffs at the agency ordered by President Trump and Elon Musk, the billionaire adviser leading the federal government's cost-cutting efforts. Since Tuesday, when the layoffs began, lawmakers, medical associations, research universities and state health agencies have scrambled to sort out which jobs were eliminated, and how to respond. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has already admitted that some workers were mistakenly fired alongside nearly 20 percent of the agency's work force, and has promised that they will be reinstated. The Republican chairman and top Democrat on the Senate health committee asked Mr. Kennedy to testify about the cuts next week, but it is not clear if he has accepted the invitation. One thing is clear: The layoffs and wholesale reorganization of the department are the latest in a series of Trump administration actions ripe for legal challenges. The administration has been on shaky ground, legal experts said, in dissolving agencies created and funded by Congress. Max Stier, the president of Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that promotes best practices in government, said that the administration had overstepped its authority. 'Is it legal for them to essentially demolish agencies by either firing all the vital talent that's necessary to run them, or to say that they're reorganizing?' said Mr. Stier, who is also a lawyer. 'I believe it is illegal. The reality of this is they are not even close to the line. They've tread over it in terms of the constitutional framework.' Mr. Stier added, 'It's going to be a question for the courts to resolve.' The scope of the latest layoffs at the health department — 10,000 people, on top of 10,000 others who had been fired or had left voluntarily — has set the department apart from other federal agencies that have seen similar staff reductions since the start of Mr. Trump's second term. The agency has been left with the same congressionally mandated responsibilities overseeing a $1.8 trillion budget, most of it devoted to mandatory spending programs like Medicare. The department runs more than 100 other programs that, through drug regulation, biomedical research, hospital reimbursement and child welfare initiatives, touch the lives of every American family. In many cases, those initiatives now have no staff members to administer them. Congress recently adopted a stopgap spending measure with funding 'that referenced some of these agencies by name,' said Samuel R. Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan and former health department lawyer under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. He added, 'I think there is a very serious legal question about whether just weeks later the administration can eliminate these agencies.' Mr. Bagenstos said that more information was needed before lawsuits could be filed. 'They have been very cagey about what exactly they're doing to implement these cuts and this reorganization,' he said. Mr. Kennedy, acting on orders from Mr. Trump to make large-scale cuts, has said that the staff reductions would save taxpayer money, even though federal health workers make up less than 1 percent of agency spending. Andrew Nixon, a department spokesman, said that the roughly $1.8 billion the department would recoup through the layoffs was 'still a lot of money,' and that the firings were intended to 'prioritize efficiencies.' 'Any effort to trim wasteful spending, streamline operations and ensure efficiency in government is a win for the American people,' he said. From the start of the second Trump administration, Mr. Musk's team has pushed agencies to claw back government funds for everything from teacher-training grants to H.I.V. prevention overseas. The lawsuits challenging those actions have focused on restoring frozen and canceled funding, and halting the mass layoffs. But they have largely not addressed broader legal questions about the president's power to refuse spending appropriated by Congress. This week, coalitions of Democratic state attorneys general brought two lawsuits targeting the disruptions at the federal health department. Each argued broadly that layoffs and funding cuts across the agency had disrupted the flow of federal funds to states. The rounds of layoffs, they argued, had culled the ranks of grant management, program and scientific staff members who help funds get to state health departments and who approve grants for scientific research. On Thursday, one federal judge agreed, temporarily barring the agency from terminating around $11 billion in pandemic-era funding to states. The lawsuits, and others brought against the Trump administration, have relied heavily on the Administrative Procedure Act, a law that bars the executive branch from taking sweeping actions — such as blanket terminations of grant programs — without good reason or consideration. Even though the administration's actions might violate the Constitution and infringe the authority of Congress, the lawsuits have focused more narrowly on whether the administration's actions were arbitrary. David A. Super, a law professor at Georgetown University, said that the strategy allowed federal courts to stop the government in any case in which a decision could be deemed reckless, without needing to address larger constitutional questions, such as whether Mr. Trump or Mr. Kennedy can withdraw funding from programs they oppose. 'There's a very entrenched rule that courts are not supposed to reach for issues unnecessary to resolve a case,' Mr. Super said. 'And once a court determines something is arbitrary and capricious, they have no reason to think any further about what else might be wrong with it.' Mr. Trump's decimation of the health department has also led to unusual bipartisan blowback this week. On Friday, a group of lawmakers from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, including several Republicans, sent a letter to Mr. Trump and Mr. Kennedy asking about the fate of the World Trade Center Health Program, which supports survivors of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The program had already lost around 20 percent of its staff in a round of layoffs earlier this year, but the Trump administration reversed course after a pressure campaign from lawmakers. On Thursday, 13 senators, including Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, and Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, sent a letter criticizing the firing of the entire staff of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps households pay heating and cooling bills. Zachary S. Price, a law professor at the University of California, San Francisco, said that Congress could assert its authority over federal spending in a variety of ways, but had chosen not to under Republican control. 'Congress has just been kind of passive in accepting these changes that could really damage its long-term authority,' he said. 'Litigation can address certain things but is not a great solution when it comes to these programmatic problems.' Under other circumstances, Congress could withhold funds from agencies other than the health department that Mr. Trump values deeply, or use its oversight authority to subpoena top officials over whether funds are being spent, with the threat of criminal charges for contempt of Congress if the officials do not comply. Mr. Price said that the budget process has long provided a key check on the White House's power, by forcing the legislative and executive branches to negotiate over the programs Congress funds. The sudden and dramatic cuts spearheaded by Mr. Musk have given Congress outsize importance, he added. 'It gives Congress an opportunity to override presidential policies or choices by either requiring spending or cutting off spending, but that all operates against these background assumptions about the executive branch being bound by the choices reflected in those appropriations,' Mr. Price said. 'So if the executive branch is going to assert unilateral authority to depart from that, then it kind of changes the ballgame.' Mr. Super, the Georgetown law professor, said that until courts reach firmer conclusions about how the Trump administration may have overstepped its authority, or until they issue final rulings halting some cuts, there was little Congress could do. 'If the administration can disregard two laws, they can disregard three,' he said.
