Throughout most of the 19th century, the lion’s share of appointments to federal jobs was rewarded to the faithful supporters of the winning candidate of the presidential elections. During that era, ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. "To the victor belong the spoils." For decades in the 1800s, that phrase was more than a slogan; it was the official hiring policy ...

Back in the 1990s while working for the Clinton administration’s U.S. Office of Personnel Management, I wrote articles in prominent scholarly journals with titles like “Thinking the Unthinkable in ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Then-President Donald Trump standing underneath a portrait of Andrew Jackson in November 2017. Oliver Contreras-Pool/Getty Images) ...

The hosts of the Throughline podcast bring us the story of how a presidential assassination gave rise to the modern federal civil service. The federal government is the largest employer in the U.S., ...

In recent months, Donald Trump’s campaign and conservative action groups have developed a coordinated strategy to gut the federal civil service, effectively returning the United States government to ...

Garfield had been shot by Charles Guiteau, a man universally described in the press as “a disappointed office-seeker.” Translation: Guiteau expected a job in the new Garfield administration, and he ...

Back in the 1990s while working for the Clinton administration’s U.S. Office of Personnel Management, I wrote articles in prominent scholarly journals with titles like “Thinking the Unthinkable in ...

If elected to serve a second term, Donald Trump says he supports a plan that would give him the authority to fire as many as 50,000 civil servants and replace them with members of his political party ...

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It first appeared at The Conversation. If elected to serve a second term, Donald Trump says he supports a plan that would ...