Reintroduced bills aim to fix hiring process, Social Security benefits for feds

Lawmakers have teed up two familiar bills that differ in their priorities, but that both have implications for federal employees, as well as retirees from the public sector. The first bill, the Chance to Compete Act, aims to revamp longstanding challenges in the federal hiring process. The House passed the bill Tuesday evening in a vote of 422 to 2. The bipartisan legislation would expand the use of shared assessments among different agencies, in effect trying to expand cross-agency hiring. Also under the legislation, subject matter experts (SMEs) would be…

Read More...

Why Kevin McCarthy Can’t Lose George Santos

The Republican Party has had no better friend than Nassau County in the past few years. Of America’s largest counties, few have turned more sharply toward the GOP than New York City’s neighbor to the east. This collection of Long Island suburbs swept Democrats out of local office in 2021, and last fall, Nassau County voted resoundingly Republican in New York’s gubernatorial race. Most important for the national GOP, the county helped elect three Republicans to Congress, including two candidates who flipped Democratic seats in districts that President Joe Biden…

Read More...

DeSantis Deals Blow to Woke Takeover of Education

The College Board has backed down to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and now will revise its national Advanced Placement course in African American studies. This happened following a week in which left-wing media went apoplectic, unleashing a torrent of bad press portraying the Republican governor as a dangerous fanatic and insinuating that he’s racist.  One MSNBC columnist called DeSantis’ objections to the course an attack on “free thought,” as if the Left cares about such a concept when its adherents have power. A Florida state representative wrote on Twitter that…

Read More...

Boiling the frog: How civil servants are being politicized before our eyes

Despite herculean efforts by its Democratic sponsors, a statutory ban on the Trump administration’s controversial Schedule F failed in the last session of Congress, and the chances of it passing in the next two years are now less than zero. As many readers know, Schedule F would have made political loyalty to a particular elected official (in this instance, former President Donald Trump) the litmus test for the retention of thousands of career civil servants in the federal government’s Executive Branch. That’s scary, especially to me, and I resigned from…

Read More...

Abortion Pills Will Be the Next Battle in the 2024 Election

The next front is rapidly emerging in the struggle between supporters and opponents of legal abortion, and that escalating conflict is increasing the chances that the issue will shape the 2024 election as it did last November’s midterm contest. President Joe Biden triggered the new confrontation with a flurry of recent moves to expand access to the drugs used in medication abortions, which now account for more than half of all abortions performed in the United States. Medication abortion involves two drugs: mifepristone followed by misoprostol (which is also used…

Read More...