The reformed federal workforce will be built around four pillars:
1) Return to Office: The substantial majority of federal employees who have been working remotely since Covid will be required to return to their physical offices five days a week...
2) Performance culture: The federal workforce should be comprised of the best America has to offer. We will insist on excellence at every level...
3) More streamlined and flexible workforce: While a few agencies and even branches of the military are likely to see increases in the size of their workforce, the majority of federal agencies are likely to be downsized through restructurings, realignments, and reductions in force.
4) Enhanced standards of conduct: The federal workforce should be comprised of employees who are reliable, loyal, trustworthy, and who strive for excellence in their daily work...
If you choose not to continue in your current role in the federal workforce, we thank you for your service to your country and you will be provided with a dignified, fair departure from the federal government utilizing a deferred resignation program.
Whichever path you choose, we thank you for your service to The United States of America.
We called for a federal hiring freeze, which Trump implemented on day one. Now he has exceeded our expectations with this plan to downsize and fundamentally reform the federal workforce.
We know this is brilliant because all of Washington is hyperventilating.
We noted during the 2024 campaign that Donald Trump was the first major presidential nominee of either party to fully endorse school choice for low-income children.
What do you know: he’s actually putting his words into action. We did cartwheels when we saw that Trump will sign an executive order today promoting school choice.
According to CBS News:
The executive order… directs the Department of Education to prioritize school choice programs through its discretionary grant programs, and orders the Department of Health and Human Services to issue guidance on how states receiving block grants for families and children can use those funds to support private and faith-based institutions...
"Every child deserves the best education available, regardless of their zip code," the White House document reads. "However, for generations, our government-assigned education system has failed millions of parents, students and teachers. This executive order begins to rectify that wrong by opening up opportunities for students to attend the school that best fits their needs."
3) Price Transparency Will Slash Federal Health Care Costs
Unleash Prosperity co-founders Steve Forbes and Steve Moore wrote in The New York Post this week on how Congress could slash hundreds of billions in healthcare spending without cutting Medicare patient care or access.
The chart below shows how much faster health care (and college tuition costs) have exploded than any other sector of the economy over the past two decades.
The Forbes-Moore piece notes that "an astounding 48% of federal expenditures are devoted to health-care outlays. And it's going to get worse: Federal health spending is projected to surge from 2023's $2.2 trillion to $3.8 trillion in 2032, making up a staggering 20% of the nation’s GDP."
Some medical services cost 7 to 10 times higher at one hospital or clinic than at another one nearby. But doctors and patients can’t be cost-conscious consumers because prices are hidden.
Our friend Cynthia Fisher, who runs a group called Patient Rights Advocates, tells us that fewer than one-in-four hospitals are in compliance with Trump's 2019 executive order requiring the posting of medical service prices.
Scientific journals - once the gold standard for published research - have recently taken a credibility hit as it's become clear the lengths to which editors will obscure relevant facts or not publish them.
Two academics have now blown the whistle on the corruption of medical journals.
Raphael Lataster, an infectious disease specialist, and Peter Parry, a professor of medicine, convinced the medical journal Cureus to publish their paper, warning that many journals "are now shaped by non-scientific concerns, often financial, and this has led to censorship." They identify research that's been skewed by entities such as pharmaceutical companies and the World Health Organization.
They conclude:
Academic publishing is easier when sticking to approved narratives, but this retards progress.....We need to improve. One way to improve is to properly address financial and other conflicts of interest. Another way is to entertain contrarian ideas, to indulge those occupied with 'taboo science', while still adhering to time-tested scientific principles and methods.
Last year, Scientific American urged readers to "Vote for Kamala Harris to Support Science, Health and the Environment."
Two months earlier, Nature, the prestigious British science journal, extolled Harris for backing single-payer health insurance and climate change activism, enthusing that her candidacy has "stirred optimism among scientists."
A Pew Research Center survey has found the erosion of public confidence in science and medical scientists has continued even after the COVID pandemic became a memory.
When these journals start putting science ahead of political correctness, we will start “trusting the science” again.
5) CNN Reporter Confuses His Network's Anchor By Reporting Facts
Speaking of putting politics ahead of facts and reality, we now turn to CNN.
If you are one of the few people who still watches CNN (their ratings are in the dumpster), you may know that their senior data analyst Harry Enten often confounds his network colleagues by reporting a reality that doesn't square with their preconceived notions of news. The resulting on-air exchanges can be quite funny.
Over the weekend, he appeared with news anchor Kate Bolduan and cited polls that found Donald Trump has a higher approval rating now than he has ever had before:
Enten: This is a very different Donald Trump.
Bolduan: Well, I would say correction. This is not a very different Donald Trump.
Enten: Trump is the first guy ever whose net approval rating in the first month of his second term is higher than any rating that he had (in his) entire first term.
Bolduan: I have a really hard time believing this.
Enten: This is true. I don't make stuff up. The numbers are the numbers.
