Headline Roundup • June 9th, 2025
New Federal Workers Required to Write Essays Supporting Trump's Agenda
Summary from the AllSides News Team
New federal employees are now required to write essays demonstrating their alignment with President Donald Trump's policies following the implementation of new guidelines by the US Office of Personnel Management.
The Details: The guidelines stipulate that incoming federal employees must answer four 200-word essay questions to assess their suitability for their roles. The questions reportedly aim to ascertain the applicants' understanding and commitment to the Constitution and founding principles of the United States, their skills and experience related to improving government efficiency, their willingness to advance Trump's executive orders and policy priorities, and their work ethic.
For Context: This development comes as the government's hiring freeze, implemented by President Trump after his inauguration, is set to end. The Trump administration has stressed that the new hiring plan focuses on skills-based hiring and eliminating unnecessary degree requirements. This is seen as an extension of Trump’s rejection of diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring practices.
How The Media Covered It: Newsweek (Center bias) highlighted quotes from professors who were concerned the questions lead the administration in an authoritarian direction and entail it only hiring “loyalists.” Not The Bee (Lean Right) criticized Newsweek for including the quotes, arguing that the essay questions are a good idea. “The Trump administration is asking people that they are hiring whether or not they're willing to ... work for the Trump administration and not undermine them,” it said.
Revised by the AllSides staff (of humans) after a first draft from our custom AI. Learn more. Support our mission. Suggest an improvement to this summary.
Featured Coverage of this Story
Anna Moneymaker/Getty
While the first four months of President Donald Trump’s second term have been characterized by mass layoffs and hiring freezes, the government is about to start accepting new employees — with one major new requirement.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management laid out the guidelines for hopeful applicants in a May 29 memo. In keeping with Trump’s rejection of diversity, equity and inclusion hiring practices, the memo stresses that the “Merit Hiring Plan” focuses on “skills-based hiring, eliminating unnecessary degree requirements, and requiring the use of rigorous, job-related assessments to ensure candidates are selected based on...
This, put simply, is such a good idea and I am so happy to see it.
The Trump admin is trying to replace decades of libs being hired as bureaucrats in the federal government, having wormed their ways into the deepest halls of power, and is requiring new hires to - you know - support the administration and the Constitution.
Those seeking a job in the federal government will now have to write an essay in support of President Donald Trump's executive orders, according to a memo from the Office of Personnel Management.
Vince Haley, the White House's head of domestic policy, wrote in the May 29 memorandum that all civil service applicants must answer a series of essays as part of the job recruitment process, including one about how they would "help advance" Trump's policy priorities.
Newsweek has contacted the Office of Personnel Management for comment via email outside normal working...
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