Quit jobs if disagree with Trump: White House

International Desk: The White House on Monday warned State Department officials that they should leave their jobs if they did not agree with President Trump’s agenda, an extraordinary effort to stamp out a wave of internal dissent against Mr. Trump’s temporary ban on entry visas for people from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

Career officials at the State Department are circulating a so-called dissent cable, which says that Mr. Trump’s executive order closing the nation’s doors to more than 200 million people with the intention of weeding out a handful of would-be terrorists will not make the nation safer, and might instead deepen the threat.

“These career bureaucrats have a problem with it?” Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, told reporters. “They should either get with the program or they can go.”

It was yet another stark confrontation between the new president, who is moving swiftly to upend years of policies, and a federal bureaucracy still struggling with the jolting change of power in Washington. There is open hostility to Mr. Trump’s ideas in some pockets of the government, and deep frustration among those enforcing the visa ban that the White House announced the order without warning or consulting them.
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On Monday night, Mr. Trump fired acting Attorney General Sally Q. Yates for refusing to enforce the visa ban. In her place, Mr. Trump named Dana J. Boente, United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, to serve as acting attorney general until Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama is confirmed. A spokesman said Mr. Boente had told the White House that he was willing to sign off on the executive order.

The reverberations extended beyond Washington. Corporate chieftains from Detroit to Silicon Valley sharply criticized the ban, saying it was inconsistent with their values. Mr. Trump also faced mounting legal challenges, as two Democratic-leaning states, Massachusetts and Washington, signaled they would attack the policy in court and a Muslim advocacy group filed a lawsuit calling it an unconstitutional religious test.

At the White House, where questions about the ban overshadowed all other issues on Monday, Mr. Spicer acknowledged the State Department’s dissent channel has long been a way for its staff to register objections over administration policies. But he displayed little patience for it.

“The president has a very clear vision,” Mr. Spicer said. “He’s been clear on it since the campaign, he’s been clear on it since taking office — that he’s going to put the country first.”

“If somebody has a problem with that agenda,” he added, “that does call into question whether or not they should continue in that post.”

The visa ban has rattled other agencies, as well: the Defense Department, which says it hurts the military’s local partners in conflict zones like Iraq; the Department of Homeland Security, whose customs officers are struggling to enforce the directive; and the Justice Department, whose lawyers are charged with defending its legality.

But Mr. Spicer’s blunt warning posed an especially difficult choice for the more than 100 State Department officials who indicated they would sign the memo. They can sign a final version, which would be put on the desk of Rex W. Tillerson, Mr. Trump’s designated secretary of state, on his first day in office. Or, they can choose not to identify themselves, and rely on the leak of the letter to make their point without identifying themselves.

Under State Department rules and whistle-blower laws, it is forbidden to retaliate against any employee who follows the procedures and submits a dissent memorandum. One of the signatories, in a text message, said State Department signatories were trying to figure out what to do.

Source: Agencies

 

risingbd/Dhaka/Feb 01, 2017/A K Azad