By Courtney Rozen and Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump’s administration is close to implementing a rule that would end long-standing legal protections for whistleblowers among senior career federal employees, according to documents reviewed by Reuters.
The rule, if finalized, would follow Trump’s April proposal to change employment standards for federal workers and build on a series of actions by the administration to minimize dissent across the government.
Specifically, the documents showed the rule would remove legal protections that prohibit U.S. government agencies from retaliating against employees who accuse them of wrongdoing, such as violating the law or wasting funds.
The Trump administration said in a statement that the employees would not be stripped of protections, although it said the rule would put individual federal agencies in charge of enforcing those protections.
The statement said the administration had made it clear in its April proposal that the employees would not have the law’s safeguards, pointing to a footnote in the proposal that cites the protection law. That footnote, however, did not use the word “whistleblower.”
The White House staff is preparing a new policy on “accountability” in the civil service, according to a government website, although it did not indicate the content. The rule would become final upon publication in the Federal Register.
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