Top career officials at the Department of the Interior (DOI) were placed on administrative leave late last week after declining to immediately give affiliates of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) levels of access to a payroll system that would in theory allow them to, among other things, stop individual Supreme Court justices' paychecks. For several weeks, say sources with direct knowledge of the situation, DOGE operatives have been seeking what they termed 'full' or 'system' access to the DOI's payroll, human resources, and credentialing systems. Among the systems to which it demanded full access is the Federal Personnel and Payroll System (FPPS), which is housed in the DOI's Interior Business Center and is used by dozens of federal agencies ranging from the Department of Justice to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to handle payroll and records associated with more than 275,000 federal workers, including at agencies outside the executive branch. The DOGE...
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