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Trump Will Strip Protections from Career Civil Servants, Miller Says

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Trump Will Strip Protections from Career Civil Servants, Miller Says

President-elect Donald J. Trump is planning a string of executive orders during his first days in office, including one to strip job protections from career civil servants, his top policy adviser told Republican members of Congress on Sunday, according to two people briefed on the matter.

In a phone call with a few dozen Republicans on Sunday, Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s incoming homeland security adviser and deputy White House chief of staff overseeing policy, laid out the broad strokes of what Mr. Trump is planning on energy, immigration and federal workers. The call was reported earlier by the website Punchbowl and confirmed by two people briefed on the conversation.

A Trump spokesman did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Mr. Trump has indicated he plans to sign roughly 100 executive orders in the initial days of his presidency, with a number coming within hours of his being sworn in on Monday.

Among them are substantial actions to reshape the federal bureaucracy’s workplace rules, which are in line with various promises that Mr. Trump made on the campaign trail.

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Mr. Miller described, while providing little detail, executive orders to undo actions taken by President Biden to institute “diversity, equity and inclusion” measures in federal agencies, and to roll back protections for transgender people receiving some government services.

Mr. Trump also plans to reinstate an order he issued during his first term to create a new category of federal workers, known as Schedule F, that would lack the same job protections enjoyed by career civil servants, who are supposed to be hired according to merit and cannot be arbitrarily fired. That would allow his administration to shift large numbers of federal workers into a new status over which it could keep a much tighter rein, including the ability to hire and fire them more easily. The order is significant as Mr. Trump and Mr. Miller have a deep hostility toward large portions of the federal bureaucracy, which the president-elect often derisively calls the “deep state.”

Mr. Trump is also planning a string of orders related to energy policy, much of which arise from pledges to encourage offshore drilling and end the electric vehicle tax credit, as well as stop spending on Mr. Biden’s climate policies.

And on immigration, as The New York Times has reported, Mr. Trump is planning to designate drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations”; declare a border emergency to allow him to go around Congress and surge money and potentially military resources to the border; and declare a public health emergency to essentially seal the border as the administration did during the coronavirus pandemic. He also is expected to curtail asylum grants and step up detentions and deportations.

Mr. Miller has been leading the executive order process throughout the transition, aiming for as much secrecy as possible and only opening the aperture internally as time went on so that various agency heads could see some of the work. He has been using a team of lawyers to vet them.

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At his rally at the Capital One Arena on Sunday afternoon, Mr. Trump told the crowd that the executive orders would make them “extremely happy.”

He said he had beaten back efforts by some advisers to delay his Day 1 executive orders, saying he wants to give the country a massive first day and first week in office filled with activity.

Mr. Trump also said he plans to quickly release the classified files related to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

And he previewed coming clemency grants for people convicted in connection with the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021. He referred to them as “hostages,” as he has throughout the campaign.

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Trump fires last members of election commission, inciting fears of midterm ‘chaos’

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Trump fires last members of election commission, inciting fears of midterm ‘chaos’

Donald Trump has terminated the remaining members of the independent, federal commission that assists election administration officials nationwide just a few months before the midterm elections, multiple outlets reported Thursday.

The remaining three commissioners of the four-member bipartisan commission ⁠were forced out on Thursday in different ways. The one Republican appointee resigned and the other ⁠two, Democratic appointees were notified of their terminations via email from ​the White House presidential personnel office.

“On ‌behalf of President ‌Donald J Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position ‌as Commissioner of the Election Assistance Commission is terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service,” the email, seen by Reuters, said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Election Assistance Commission serves as a “national clearinghouse of information on election ‌administration”, accredits testing laboratories and certifies voting systems, and maintains the national mail-voter registration form developed by the National ​Voter Registration Act of 1993, according to the commission’s website. The terminations follow Trump and top administration officials’ advocacy to change vote-by-mail requirements and investigations into the 2020 election outcome, which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

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“It is ⁠irresponsible and dangerous that this Administration remains dead set on ​causing chaos for ​our election officials across this ​country,” Arizona secretary of state Adrian Fontes said in a ​Thursday statement. “This ‌move undermines the integrity ​of nonpartisan ​election administration.”

The 2002 law that established the commission, the Help America Vote Act, states the president can appoint replacements to the commission.

It is unclear how Trump will move ahead with the commission.

Reuters contributed reporting

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Former Olympian pleads not guilty in reflecting pool vandalism charges

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Former Olympian pleads not guilty in reflecting pool vandalism charges

Former U.S. Olympian David Hearn (left) walks with his attorney Norman Eisen to speak to reporters and protesters gathered after his arraignment at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.

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Former U.S. Olympic canoeist David Hearn pleaded not guilty to damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in D.C. Superior Court Thursday morning.

Federal prosecutors charged Hearn with a single count of destruction of property causing more than $1,000 in damage to the pool.

Hearn has previously claimed, which his attorneys repeated during a short press conference outside the court, that he simply touched the water in the pool out of curiosity.

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The Trump administration had just completed a $14 million renovation of the pool.

But shortly after the work finished, peeling paint and algae gathered in the water. The remodel has been largely criticized as a massive failure and waste of taxpayer dollars.

Superior Court Judge Carmen McLean released Hearn on his own recognizance. His next hearing is scheduled for Aug. 5.

Norm Eisen, one of Hearn’s attorneys, spoke to reporters outside of court following the hearing. He said the administration is using Hearn as a “scapegoat … for their own failures.”

“It is not a crime to touch the reflecting pool, to touch water in the United States of America,” he said.

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Prosecutors say there is a host of evidence against Hearn.

This is a developing story.

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

Three more people have been criminally charged with destruction of property at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Officers say they detained Cameron Thiers, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Justin Carreno one Saturday afternoon in June and described in court documents witnessing them peeling and removing pieces of blue paint from the Reflecting Pool.

One officer “witnessed Carreno reach down into the reflecting pool and pull up a piece of the blue paint,” according to the court documents.

The officer who detained Dennison-Gibby “found 1 additional piece of the reflecting pool liner” in her purse, the documents said.

All three incidents were recorded on the officers’ body worn cameras, they said in the court documents.

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Several “partnering law enforcement agencies assigned to the Reflecting Pool” working with US Park Police were involved in detaining the two men and one woman — including officers from Texas, Oklahoma, Montana and California.

One of the officers said in court documents that Thiers “admitted to removing a piece of blue sealant from the Reflecting Pool and still had it in his hand when I made contact with him.”

The three defendants were arraigned in court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charges of destruction of property with a value less than $1,000. The judge ordered them to stay away from the Reflecting Pool.

Lawyers for Thiers and Dennison-Gibby declined to comment. CNN has reached out to Carreno’s attorney.

If found guilty of destruction of property, the defendants could be fined up to $1,000 and face a maximum of 180 days behind bars.

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The New York Times first reported that three additional people had been charged with damaging the Reflecting Pool.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that vandals caused major damage to the pool by gashing the lining after his administration spent more than $14 million on renovations, though he has not provided evidence to support that claim. The officers who charged Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby did not accuse them of gashing the lining.

Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn was indicted by a grand jury in Washington, DC, last week for allegedly damaging the Reflecting Pool. Hearn — unlike Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby – was charged with destruction of property with a value of more than $1,000 which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, if convicted. He is set to be arraigned in court Thursday.

Crews began draining the Reflecting Pool over the weekend to make repairs, according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, for the second time in three months.

The move comes after weeks of problems – algae blooms, green-hued water, a chipping bottom and the administration’s allegations of vandalism – that have plagued the iconic landmark, making its woes the subject of national interest.

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