President Trump signed an executive order last week that could turn tens of thousands of nonpartisan career civil service jobs into "excepted service" positions, stripping federal scientists, public health experts, attorneys, regulators, and other policy professions of civil service protections. These career employees would essentially become political appointees whom the president could fire without cause or recourse.

Ronald Sanders, appointed by Trump to head the Federal Salary Council, cited this order when resigning Sunday, telling The Washington Post on Monday, "I don't want to sound too corny here, but it was just a matter of conscience."

Trump's order "is nothing more than a smoke screen for what is clearly an attempt to require the political loyalty of those who advise the president, or failing that, to enable their removal with little if any due process," Sanders wrote in his resignation letter. "I simply cannot be part of an administration that seeks ... to replace apolitical expertise with political obeisance. Career federal employees are legally and duty-bound to be nonpartisan; they take an oath to preserve and protect our Constitution and the rule of law ... not to be loyal to a particular president or administration."

Sanders, a lifelong Republican who has worked in federal personnel positions over four decades, said in his letter he "cannot in good conscience continue" to serve a president who "seeks to make loyalty to him the litmus test for many thousands of career civil servants." On MSNBC Monday night, Rachel Maddow applauded his letter a "very, very rare Trump administration profile in courage."

Trump's executive order "would be a profound reimagining of the career workforce, but one that may end up as a statement of purpose rather than anything else," the Post notes. "The order fast-tracks a process that gives agencies until Jan. 19 to review potentially affected jobs. That’s a day before the next presidential inauguration. An administration under Democratic nominee Joe Biden would be unlikely to allow the changes to proceed." Peter Weber

David Chang's final answer just helped him make a bit of TV history.

The celebrity chef won $1 million for charity on Sunday's episode of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, becoming the first celebrity ever to do so, People reports.

Chang won thanks to his answer to a question about the first president to have electricity in the White House. The answer was Benjamin Harrison, which Chang locked in at the suggestion of ESPN's Mina Kimes, who he used his phone-a-friend lifeline to call. Celebrities on the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire revival hosted by Jimmy Kimmel play for charity, and Chang's winnings are going to the non-profit Southern Smoke Foundation, which according to its website "provides funding to individuals in the food and beverage industry who are in crisis."

"I'm a gambling man, and shame on me if this is wrong, but I'm doing this because having a million dollars right now in this moment is a game-changer for many, many families," Chang said before answering.

Chang told USA Today after the show aired that he's "in shock" and "honestly can't believe it happened," but he explained some of his reasoning for taking the risk and not walking away with $500,000.

"I thought, this is for Southern Smoke, Southern Smoke is for the hospitality industry and we are going through some horrible times," Chang told USA Today. "We are in such a bad shape that half a million dollars isn't enough — and neither is a million dollars — but I wanted to put emphasis on it and raise awareness of the problem, so it was worth the chance." Brendan Morrow

Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has been a frequent target of President Trump and his allies over the last few weeks. He's been accused — without evidence — of overseeing an electoral process that allowed for a significant amount of voter fraud, which his critics claim led to President-elect Joe Biden's victory in the traditionally red state. Raffensperger hasn't shied away from firing back, but in his latest comments Monday he appeared to thread the needle when it comes to Trump himself.

Raffensperger said unspecified "dishonest actors" are "exploiting the emotions of Trump supporters with fantastic claims, half truths, and misinformation," and he painted the president as a victim, as well.

It's understandable why Raffensperger may be seeking to avoid direct conflict with Trump, but not everyone is buying the way he framed the president's role in the situation. Tim O'Donnell

The Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments Monday in President Trump's attempt to exclude undocumented immigrants from counting in the 2020 census. The decision could affect congressional representation and federal funding, and it's far from the only way Trump's immigration policies could resonate for decades to come.

From implementing his Muslim ban in the early days of his presidency to recent changes to the U.S. citizenship test, much of Trump's term has centered around restricting both legal and illegal immigration. President-elect Joe Biden's election win hasn't slowed that pursuit. In Trump's last few weeks in office, he has reportedly pivoted to targeting birthright citizenship again. Trump's team has also used the pandemic to restrict the hiring of foreign workers and rapidly deport migrants and children who cross the southern border, and is rushing to add to his border wall. And if the Supreme Court — stacked with six conservatives — decides in Trump's favor, he could succeed in curbing representation and funding in left-leaning cities.

Biden has pledged to reverse all of Trump's restrictive immigration policies, some in the first days of his presidency. But thanks to "the genius of Stephen Miller," the architect of Trump's harsh immigration policies, that may be impossible, a source familiar with the Biden transition tells CNN. The past four years of slashing immigration have weakened the nation's immigration infrastructure; For example, Trump's historic low refugee caps have weaned staff to the point that it could be impossible to quickly increase refugee admissions, as Biden has proposed. Read more about Trump's lasting immigration legacy at CNN. Kathryn Krawczyk

Merriam-Webster has selected the word of the year for 2020, and it's the obvious choice.

The company on Monday picked "pandemic" as its 2020 word of the year, saying the term received a massive 115,806 percent spike in searches in March compared to a year earlier, The Associated Press reports. That spike came on the day the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, Merriam-Webster said, though smaller spikes had occurred earlier in the year.

"Sometimes a single word defines an era, and it's fitting that in this exceptional — and exceptionally difficult — year, a single word came immediately to the fore as we examined the data that determines what our word of the year will be," Merriam-Webster said.

Among the numerous runners up were terms related to the COVID-19 pandemic like "coronavirus," "quarantine," and "asymptomatic." But another runner up was "defund," which Merriam-Webster said saw a more than 6,000 percent increase in lookups in 2020 amid calls to "defund the police."

The word "mamba" also saw a spike in searchers following the death of Kobe Bryant, who was nicknamed "Black Mamba," and "malarkey," a word used frequently by President-elect Joe Biden, saw an uptick in searches in 2020 as well. The other runners up were "kraken," "antebellum," "schadenfreude," "irregardless," and "icon."

Meanwhile, Dictionary.com also picked "pandemic" as its word of the year, with senior research editor John Kelly telling The Associated Press, "It seems maybe a little bit obvious, and that's fair to say, but think about life before the pandemic. Things like pandemic fashion would have made no sense. The pandemic as an event created a new language for a new normal." Brendan Morrow

In Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine trial, all but 11 of the 196 participants who contracted the virus were in the placebo group, good for a 94 percent efficacy rate. But perhaps even more crucially, none of the people who received the vaccine developed a severe infection, the company said. There were 30 severe cases in the trial — including one death — but they all occurred in the placebo group.

Experts have previously highlighted the importance of separating out worst the cases. Back in September, Drs. Peter Doshi and Eric Topol, in an op-ed for The New York Times, expressed concern that companies developing vaccines, including Moderna and Pfizer, which are on track to receive emergency approval from the Food and Drug Administration in the coming weeks, wouldn't specify the severity of the infections in their trial. But Moderna did just that Monday (Pfizer has also provided data on the matter), and the news is encouraging. Tim O'Donnell

Back in March and April, when the novel coronavirus was still new and mask-wearing and social distancing foreign, the U.S. rolled out a bunch of ads explaining best COVID-19 practices for keep yourself and others safe. Some of them, like Paul Rudd's PSA for New York and Lego's Batman and Star Wars ads were amusing and informative. Others haven't aged so well.

The U.S. is now setting new records for COVID-19, including topping 200,000 new infections on Friday alone, and top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci warned Sunday about a possible "surge upon a surge" in the weeks after Thanksgiving. A vaccine is coming, he added, and "if we can hang together as a country and do these kinds of things to blunt these surges until we get a substantial proportion of the population vaccinated, we can get through this."

The U.S. isn't going through this alone, of course, and some foreign governments, companies, and artists have tried different ways of communicating the severity of the virus and the need to stop the spread of the coronavirus. As COVID fatigue crashes into the holidays, here are six creative ways other countries have tried to keep up the fight.

1. Germany created an instant classic in November that lightly tugged at the patriotic impulse while highlighting both the stakes and the relatively low cost of serving the greater good.

2. Turkey's Süleyman Hacıcaferoğlu took some animated matchsticks created in the spring by Spanish artists Juan Declan and Valentina Izaguirre, threw on the Mission: Impossible theme song, and created an arresting visual representation of how the virus spreads — and stops.

3. South Africa drew on the ick factor to encourage mask wearing.

4. Vietnam's health department produced an animated ad with a "Jealous Coronavirus" song that is so catchy, it became a bona fide hit in the country.

5. Singapore created its own pop hit, "Singapore Be Steady," with actor Gurmit Singh in character as Phua Chu Kang.

6. In Croatia, Karlovacko beer got its social distancing message across in a language that is probably universal: the disapproving look of a potential parent-in-law. Watch below. Peter Weber