By Astead W. Herndon, James Surdam, Katia Vannoy, Rebecca Suner and Gabriel Blanco •February 12, 2025
One of President Trump’s first executive orders claims the power to fire, and hire, tens of thousands of career civil servants across the government. Astead W. Herndon, a national politics reporter and the host of the politics podcast “The Run-Up,” explains the order, which has drawn lawsuits from federal unions.