Yesterday morning, we published a scoop by Alice Ollstein: Congressional Democrats, she reported, are demanding an investigation into Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke’s order last summer to reassign dozens of top-level DOI career employees. His choice of who to reassign, Democrats allege, may have been racially discriminatory, in addition to being politically motivated. Government investigators are also currently looking into whether these reassignments may have broken laws protecting civil servants.
Alice’s reporting is part of TPM’s longterm focus on how the Trump administration treats civil servants, and whether the administration is choosing who to fire and reassign with political objectives in mind. That would be illegal.
Thinking big picture, why does this story matter? In a Prime post, Alice digs into one reason: If investigators uphold Zinke’s decision to reassign and marginalize DOI employees, one whistleblower told her, it could give the green light for a government-wide purge.
