


Leaders in President Donald Trump’s administration have made recent changes in addition to Trump adviser and billionaire Elon Musk’s bid to push out federal workers to cut costs.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced new leadership Sunday at the agency tasked with immigration enforcement as she pledged to step up lie detector tests on employees to identify those who may be leaking information about operations to the media.
While polygraph exams are typically not admissible in court proceedings, they are frequently used by federal law enforcement agencies and for national security clearances.
White House officials have expressed frustration with the pace of deportations, blaming it in part on recent leaks revealing cities where authorities planned to conduct operations.
Todd Lyons, the former assistant director of field operations for the agency’s enforcement arm, will serve as acting ICE director. Madison Sheahan, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and Noem’s former aide when she was governor of South Dakota, has been tapped as a deputy director.
On Sunday, she said two people “were leaking our enforcement operations that we had planned and were going to conduct in several cities and exposed vulnerabilities.” She said they could face up to 10 years in prison.
At the Health and Human Services Department run by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., most of the 80,000 workers responsible for researching diseases, inspecting food and administering Medicare and Medicaid under the auspices of HHS were emailed an offer to leave their job for as much as a $25,000 payment as part of Trump’s government cuts.
Workers can’t start opting in until Monday and have until 5 p.m. Friday to submit a response for the so-called voluntary separation offer. The email was sent to staff across the department, which includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and the National Institutes of Health as well as the Food and Drug Administration, both in Maryland.
The mass email went out to a “broad population of HHS employees,” landing in their inboxes days before agency heads are due to offer plans for shrinking their workforces. HHS has one of the government’s biggest annual budgets: about $1.7 trillion that is mostly spent on health care coverage for millions of people enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid.
The agency oversees health insurance for roughly half the country through Medicare for older adults and Medicaid for disabled and poor Americans. Kennedy has hinted at plans for deep cuts to the staff.