Trump says he fired Biden appointees, chef Jose Andres says he resigned

Washington: US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he plans to remove over 1,000 appointees from the administration of former President Joe Biden and that he had fired four individuals immediately, including celebrity chef Jose Andres and former top general Mark Milley.

However, Andres said on social media that his two-year term on the Presidential Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition was already over. The Spanish chef, whose World Central Kitchen food aid program feeds people impacted by disasters, said he submitted his resignation last week.

"My Presidential Personnel Office 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 to Make America Great Again," Trump said in a post on Truth Social overnight.

"Let this serve as a notice of dismissal," Trump wrote, and named Milley, Andres, his former Iran envoy Brian Hook and Keisha Lance Bottoms, who Biden appointed to an export council. "YOU'RE FIRED!", he wrote.

The move comes amid other firings in Trump's first salvoes to gut the federal bureaucracy during his second term in office. Trump has vowed to dismantle the "deep state" by purging civil servants who do not hew to his agenda, and aims to strip job protections from 50,000 federal employees.

Referring to Trump's "You're fired" message, Andres in a post on X urged Trump "to put politics and name calling aside…and instead lift up the everyday people working to bring America together."

Trump, in his social media post overnight, also said he was dismissing Milley from the National Infrastructure Advisory Council.

Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who Trump has suggested should be executed for holding back-channel talks with China, said he was grateful for a preemptive pardon by Biden on Monday. His photo was removed from the Pentagon shortly after Trump was sworn into office.

Representatives for Milley could not be immediately reached for comment.

Trump also said he was removing former diplomat Brian Hook, his former Iran envoy from the Wilson Center for Scholars and former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms from the President's Export Council. Neither Hook nor Lance Bottoms immediately responded to requests for comment.

Hook was appointed by Trump - not Biden - during his first term to the board of the Wilson Center think tank. The center had no comment.

Trump's administration has fired US Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Linda Lee Fagan, the first female uniformed leader of an Armed Forces branch, a US official said Tuesday.

The head of the US Transportation Security Administration, first appointed by Trump during his first White House term in 2017, was also forced out on Monday.

His officials have asked more than one dozen senior career diplomats to step down. Four top officials from an agency that operates US immigration courts were also removed.

On Monday, Trump ordered federal workers to return to the office five days a week and weakened job protections for civil servants.

Trump's allies have said the return-to-work mandate and the stripping of civil service protections, known as "Schedule F," will hold the federal bureaucracy accountable.