The Mexico City policy, sometimes referred to by its critics as the global gag rule, is a United States government policy blocking U.S. federal funding for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) providing abortion counseling or referrals, advocated to decriminalize abortion, or expanded abortion services. When in effect, the Mexico City policy is a U.S. government policy that requires foreign non-governmental organizations to certify that they will not "perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning" with non-U.S. funds as a condition for receiving U.S. global family planning assistance, and during its January 23, 2017 implementation any other U.S. global health assistance, including U.S. global HIV and maternal and child health (MCH) assistance.
The United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is an independent agency of the United States government that manages the United States federal civil service. The agency provides federal human resources policy, oversight, and support, and tends to healthcare (FEHB), life insurance (FEGLI), and retirement benefits for federal government employees, retirees, and their dependents.
The excepted service is the part of the United States federal civil service that is not part of either the competitive service or the Senior Executive Service. It allows streamlined hiring processes to be used under certain circumstances.
Executive Order 11246, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, was an executive order of the Article II branch of the United States federal government, in place from 1965 to 2025, specifying non-discriminatory practices and affirmative action in federal government hiring and employment.
The Senior Executive Service (SES) is a position classification in the United States federal civil service equivalent to general officer or flag officer rank in the U.S. Armed Forces. It was created in 1979 when the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 went into effect under President Jimmy Carter.
The E-Government Act of 2002, is a United States statute enacted on 17 December 2002, with an effective date for most provisions of 17 April 2003. Its stated purpose is to improve the management and promotion of electronic government services and processes by establishing a Federal Chief Information Officer within the Office of Management and Budget, and by establishing a framework of measures that require using Internet-based information technology to improve citizen access to government information and services, and for other purposes.
Equal employment opportunity is equal opportunity to attain or maintain employment in a company, organization, or other institution. Examples of legislation to foster it or to protect it from eroding include the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which was established by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to assist in the protection of United States employees from discrimination. The law was the first federal law designed to protect most US employees from employment discrimination based on that employee's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
The United States federal civil service is the civilian workforce of the United States federal government's departments and agencies. The federal civil service was established in 1871. U.S. state and local government entities often have comparable civil service systems that are modeled on the national system to varying degrees.
The Federal Salary Council (FSC) is an advisory body of the executive branch of the United States government. Established under the provisions of Title 5, section 5304(e) of the United States Code, the FSC provides recommendations on the locality pay program, created by the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990 (FEPCA). The locality pay program provides for localized pay differentials, also known as "comparability payments," for federal employees paid under the pay scale of the United States federal civil service who work in the United States and its territories and possessions. Section 1911 of Public Law 111-84, the Non-Foreign Area Retirement Equity Assurance Act of 2009, phased in locality pay for employees in the non-foreign areas as identified in Title 5 of the Code of Federal Regulations (5 C.F.R. 591.205). Alaska and Hawaii are separate locality-pay areas with separate pay tables. Other non-foreign areas are included as part of the "Rest of U.S." locality pay area.
Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) is a category of unclassified information within the U.S. Federal government. The CUI program was created by President Obama’s Executive Order 13556 to create a streamlined method for information sharing and safeguarding. The Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) acts as the Executive Agent (EA) of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and is responsible for oversight of the CUI program. The ISOO monitors the implementation of the CUI program by executive branch agencies. CUI will replace agency specific labels such as For Official Use Only (FOUO), Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU), and Law Enforcement Sensitive (LES) on new data and some data with legacy labels will also qualify as Controlled Unclassified Information. Federal contractors who handle CUI will be required to self-assess with the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) under the Cyber AB.
According to the United States Office of Government Ethics, a political appointee is "any employee who is appointed by the President, the Vice President, or agency head". As of 2016, there were around 4,000 political appointment positions which an incoming administration needs to review, and fill or confirm, of which about 1,200 require Senate confirmation. The White House Presidential Personnel Office (PPO) is one of the offices most responsible for political appointees and for assessing candidates to work at or for the White House.
The 2017 United States federal hiring freeze was instituted by the Presidential Memorandum signed by President Donald Trump on January 23, 2017. Trump and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney ordered the hiring freeze lifted on April 12, 2017.
Russell Thurlow Vought is an American government official who served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) from July 2020 to January 2021. Before assuming this role, he was deputy director of the OMB for part of 2018, and served as acting director from 2019 to 2020.
Schedule Policy/Career, commonly known by its former name Schedule F, is a job classification for appointments in the excepted service of the United States federal civil service for permanent policy-related positions. The purpose of the provision is to increase the president's control over the federal career civil service by removing their civil service protections and making them easy to dismiss, which proponents stated would increase flexibility and accountability to elected officials. It was widely criticized as providing means to retaliate against federal officials for political reasons, impede the effective functioning of government, and providing risk to democracy. It has been estimated that tens or hundreds of thousands of career employees could be reclassified, increasing the number of political appointments by a factor of ten.
Executive Order 13990, officially titled Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis is an executive order signed by President Joe Biden on January 20, 2021, which implements various environmental policies of his administration including revoking the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline and temporarily prohibiting drilling in the arctic refuge. It was rescinded by Donald Trump within hours of his assuming office on January 20, 2025.
The second and current tenure of Donald Trump as the president of the United States began on January 20, 2025, when he was inaugurated as the 47th president. Trump, a Republican from Florida, who previously served as the 45th president from 2017 to 2021, took office following his victory over Democratic incumbent vice president Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. He is the second president in U.S. history to serve nonconsecutive terms after Grover Cleveland in 1893 and is the oldest individual to assume the presidency. Following his victories in the 2016 and 2024 elections, he is not eligible for a third term according to the 22nd Amendment.
Executive Order 14173, titled "Ending Illegal Discrimination And Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity", is an executive order signed by Donald Trump, the 47th President of the United States, on January 21, 2025. The executive order instructs federal departments not to issue contracts to private organizations that enforce diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) frameworks. The order does not affect state or lower jurisdiction level DEIA related government contracting practices. It specifically prevents affirmative action from being implemented by government contractors. The order also revoked certain parts of the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) order that was signed by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, as well as other orders, in terms of federal contracting jobs. The order also requests federal agencies to start an investigation on 9 publicly traded companies.
Executive Order 14148, entitled "Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions" is an executive order signed by United States president Donald Trump on January 20, 2025, during the first day of his second presidential term. The order directed the rescindment of several executive orders enacted during the Biden administration.
Clare A. Martorana is an American technology executive who served as Federal Chief Information Officer of the United States in the Biden Administration from March 2021 until January 2025. She was the fifth person to hold the job of Federal CIO, which was created by the E-Government Act of 2002. The Federal CIO's office is a part of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Amanda Scales is an American businesswoman who is currently serving as the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
