President Donald Trump said he plans to remove more than 1,000 appointees from former President Joe Biden's administration, announcing four firings on social media, including celebrity chef Jose Andres and former top general Mark Milley, Reuters reported.
"My Office of Presidential Personnel is actively in the process of identifying and removing over a thousand presidential appointees from the previous administration who are not aligned with our vision of Making America Great Again," Trump said in a post on his social media account "Trot Social" shortly after midnight.
The move is likely to reignite concerns that the president is seeking to replace Biden appointees with people loyal to his agenda, Reuters noted. Milley was given a preventive pardon by Biden yesterday.
Andres, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Biden, was removed from the President's Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, Trump said in his post.
A portrait of Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who Trump suggested should be executed for conducting secret negotiations with China, was removed from the Pentagon shortly after Trump took office.
Trump also said he was removing former diplomat Brian Hook from the Wilson Center for Scholars and former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of the President's Export Council.
"Let this serve as official notice of the firing of these 4 individuals, and many more to come soon," Trump wrote, adding: "YOU ARE FIRED!"
Trump also ordered federal employees to return to the office five days a week and weakened job protections for state employees. These are the first steps in his campaign to clean up the federal bureaucracy, Reuters notes.