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By: FEDweek StaffThe Senate has voted to confirm Kiran Ahuja as OPM director, but the party-line nature of the vote—all Democrats in favor and all Republicans against, with Vice President Harris breaking the tie—signals a likely continuation of the years of partisan divisions over the agency and its policies.
Ahuja is a former Justice Department attorney whose other positions include several years as OPM chief of staff during the Obama administration and leadership positions on the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, among others.
OPM has had only acting leadership for all but about 12 months of the last six years after a confirmed director under President Obama resigned following breaches of two OPM databases containing personal information on more than 20 million current and former federal employees and others.
Since then, Republicans blocked a nominee to serve the remainder of Obama’s second term while Democratic caused the withdrawal of an initial Trump administration nominee and Democrats blocked a Trump nominee to replace a confirmed director who resigned last March. She and the other confirmed director under Trump each resigned after about six months in disputes with higher administration officials.
The underlying issues have varied each time but this time involved Ahuja’s views on abortion—a long-standing law generally bars abortion coverage in the FEHB—and diversity training—which became a major workplace issue in the late months of the Trump administration, with partisan disputes over its content continuing since then.
Before that period, OPM directors typically were confirmed with substantial bipartisan support and in some cases by only a voice vote.
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