JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
President Trump has already moved swiftly to remake the federal government. His administration is inviting millions of federal workers to resign and is outright firing others. What is happening could have a significant impact on the lives of regular people, so some are speaking out. NPR's Andrea Hsu talked to one person who is not going quietly.
ANDREA HSU, BYLINE: Jocelyn Samuels was actually President Trump's pick back in 2020 to fill a Democratic seat on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. That's the independent agency created in 1964 to protect U.S. workers from discrimination. Samuels had heard chatter that Trump might try to remove commissioners before their terms were up, but...
JOCELYN SAMUELS: I was shocked that it happened to me.
HSU: Samuels calls herself a mainstream Democrat. She's done civil rights work in the government dating back to the 1990s. She says her policy views haven't changed, nor did she try to obscure them when she was interviewed by the first Trump administration. And yet, last week she was told, you're out. The reason?
SAMUELS: My embrace of radical ideology and my position on DEI and the permissibility of it make me unfit to serve.
HSU: Which puzzled her, given Trump found her perfectly acceptable five years ago. And so her conclusion...
SAMUELS: I think it is the perspectives of this administration that have changed.
HSU: And that scares her. The EEOC, she says, plays a critical role protecting the civil rights of tens of millions of people who go to work in America.
SAMUELS: A role that individuals simply can't make up by hiring their own lawyers and filing their own lawsuits.
HSU: Every year, the EEOC investigates tens of thousands of discrimination claims. It facilitates mediation, even takes employers to court. It's an agency committed to protecting vulnerable workers. But now, Samuels fears, that could change.
SAMUELS: I mean, I do think elections have consequences, and new administrations do have different priorities.
HSU: It's just this time what she's seeing is an effort to eviscerate the very nature of the agency's work, to bring EEOC policy in line with Trump's broader crackdown on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. She worries that employers will now roll back decades of work addressing barriers to opportunity. They might stop recruiting from underrepresented communities. They might shut down mentoring opportunities.
SAMUELS: Because the administration has offered no description of the kinds of initiatives that it is sweeping into the DEI rubric, employers may be chilled.
HSU: Now, the EEOC can't make big policy changes yet, but once Trump appoints a new commissioner, Samuels expects an upheaval. The EEOC currently has guidance that makes clear that trans people are protected from harassment on the basis of gender identity. The agency's Republican chair has repeatedly said that that guidance harms women and ignores, quote, "biological reality." Samuels sees it differently. She says the guidance is needed to protect people who experience egregious treatment at work.
SAMUELS: Whether it is through misgendering or asking invasive questions about employees' genitalia or calling people it.
HSU: After a career fighting for other people, Samuels is now having to think about herself - whether she wants to challenge her firing in court.
SAMUELS: I'm going to be thinking very hard about appropriate next steps.
HSU: The Supreme Court ruled 90 years ago that presidents don't have the power to fire commissioners of independent agencies. Samuels doesn't want to become the case that changes that. Andrea Hsu, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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