President Biden has fired three members from the former Trump Administration on his first day in office.
What We Know:
- Many of Donald Trump’s most notorious appointees, including his Cabinet secretaries, resigned shortly before Joe Biden took office. But myriad officials, whom Trump installed in the executive branch, remained in spite of their antagonism toward the new president’s agenda. As of today, Biden fired three of former President Trump’s most unqualified and corrupt appointees: Michael Pack, Kathleen Kraninger, and Peter Robb. This clean break sends a clear message that Biden will not tolerate hostile Trump holdovers in his administration, including those with time remaining in their terms.
- Biden terminated Michael Pack, who was confirmed to head the U.S. Agency for Global Media in June. Pack sought to transform the agency, which oversees the international broadcaster Voice of America, into a propaganda outlet for Trump, despite a statutory mandate that prohibits such political interference. In a perverse move, he refused to renew visas for foreign reporters who covered their home countries, subjecting them to retribution by authoritarian regimes. Pack also illegally fired the board of the Open Technology Fund, which promotes international internet freedom, and replaced them with Republican activists.
- Kathleen Kraninger was confirmed as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2018. She tried to undermine the agency’s role as a watchdog for the financial sector. She scrapped a landmark rule that restricted predatory payday lending, pressuring staff to downplay the resulting harm to consumers. Kraninger also refused to enforce a federal law that protected military personnel against a broad range of predatory lending. This decision yanked federal support from military families who were defrauded by lenders.
- According to Slate, Biden demanded the resignation of Peter Robb, who was confirmed as the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel in 2017. The NLRB was created to enforce federal laws that guarantee workers the right to form a union and bargain collectively. Robb tried to limit employees’ free speech, give managers more leeway to engage in wage theft, hobble unions’ ability to collect dues, and prevent employers from helping workers organize. He also tried to seize near-total control of the agency by demoting every regional director and consolidating power in his office.
Biden’s aggressive action upon taking office indicates that the new president will move swiftly to fire Trump allies with high positions in the executive branch. Biden shouldn’t have much trouble replacing these holdovers with Democrats in control of the Senate.
