There’s a good reason that the White House released President Donald Trump’s latest executive order in the dead of night. The order is among the darkest actions of this dark presidency.

The order would strip away protections from political interference for thousands of career government professionals, including the scientists, data analysts, regulators and others with whom Trump has warred because their loyalty is to facts rather than to him.

Under the sweeping order, Trump would make such employees “at will,” while endowing his political appointees with the very job protection that he would strip from the career, nonpolitical employees.

Ronald Sanders, a Trump-appointed civil service adviser to the White House, resigned when he saw the order, which he described as “a smoke screen for what is clearly an attempt to require the political loyalty of those who advise the President, or failing that, to enable their removal with little if any due process … I simply cannot be part of an Administration that seeks … to replace apolitical expertise with political obeisance. Career federal employees are legally and duty-bound to be nonpartisan; they take an oath to preserve and protect our Constitution and the rule of law … not to be loyal to a particular president or administration.”

The order offers a chilling glimpse of what would happen in a second Trump term.

— The Citizens’ Voice,

Wilkes-Barre (TNS)