The New York Times is reporting that Michael Grimes, a former Morgan Stanley banker who now works as a senior official at the Department of Commerce, has been ruffling feathers with workers at the CHIPS Program Office, which is responsible for overseeing grants to semiconductor manufacturers under the bipartisan CHIPS act.
According to the Times' sources, Grimes conducted "demeaning" interviews with employees at the office in which he demanded that they produce SAT or IQ scores as a way to "justify their intellect."
Grimes even asked some employees "to do math problems, like calculate the value of four to the fourth power or long division," reports that Times.
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Grimes' demands on CHIPS Program Office employees come as President Donald Trump has been publicly disparaging the legislation that was passed under President Joe Biden three years ago and that aims to build up American semiconductor manufacturing capabilities so that the United States no longer has to rely on overseas producers.
Sen. Todd Young (R-IN), who was one of the act's Republican champions, is expressing concern about the president's rhetoric about scrapping the program.
“If it needs to transform into a different model over a period of time, I’m certainly supportive of that,” Young said, according to the Times. “But let’s be clear, the CHIPS and Science Act, at least the chips portion, has mostly been implemented. It has been one of the greatest successes of our time.”