The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) serves as the chief human resources agency and personnel policy manager for the Federal Government. They are responsible for minor things like helping federal agencies acquire the talent needed to do stuff like respond to bio-medical pandemics. While you were sleeping, the director of OPM quit. He was the third Trump-appointee to quit as OPM’s director in the last three years. Apparently, one thing that set him off was Trump’s insistence on replacing senior-level federal executives with literal seniors, as in still not graduated from college. www.politico.com/…
As some prominent Democrats call for the military to help out more with the response to the coronavirus crisis, John Troup Hemenway has been hired on a 30-day detail to help the deputy director of the Presidential Personnel Office, Michael Burley, with paperwork for Defense Department political appointees, according to one of the people. Hemenway is expected to graduate from the University of Virginia in December.
Hemenway, who is in his 20s and started last week, is the third college senior to be hired in short order by the White House. One administration official praised him by saying he’s “really good at what he does.”
James Bacon, 23 and a senior at George Washington University, was hired to be one of McEntee’s righthand men as he tries to fill the Trump administration with loyalists and fire anyone who they suspect of disloyalty.
Anthony Labruna, who is expected to graduate from Iowa State University in May but was dismissed from the Trump campaign in February, was also recently named deputy White House liaison at the Department of Commerce.
So at a time of national crisis, Trump’s response is to hand over the government to undergraduate bootlickers with zero qualifications for the job. Meanwhile, the government’s personnel agency is going through yet another transition. What could possibly go wrong?