Reformers in the Republican Party, which dominated national politics in the 1860s and 1870s, had been calling for a ...

A 19th-century presidential assassination was a signature event in helping the U.S. establish a meritocratic system for ...

In the 1800s, the main job requirement for most federal employees was loyalty to the newly-elected president. But after a ...

Donald Trump is waging war on the civil service in the name of efficiency. But Washington created the modern civil service to ...

This so-called spoils system — as in, "to the victor go the spoils" — flourished for decades. President James Garfield, elected in 1880, had proposed some reforms to that system, while others ...

But after a rejected office-seeker shot President James Garfield, reformers won long-sought-after changes: workers hired for their expertise, not their fealty. Correspondent Mo Rocca talks with ...

Shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development, freezing foreign aid, placing the agency’s 10,000 employees ...

The tech oligarch has unleashed his slow-rolling coup d’état across the federal government, and it’s not clear anything can ...