![Decades after their service, "Rosie the Riveters" to be honored with Congressional Gold Medal](https://assets3.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/r/2024/04/06/fce47432-6b58-447a-a4e6-610f55d295aa/thumbnail/1200x630/01cda9d5e7009dc3c53639b925a9d4fe/0406-satmo-roseitheriveter-miller-2816447-640x360.jpg?v=95af720165ffeea582866d60dd9b1b18)
Decades after their service, "Rosie the Riveters" to be honored with Congressional Gold Medal
CBSN
This week, a long-overdue Congressional Gold Medal will be presented to the women who worked in factories during World War II and inspired "Rosie the Riveter."
The youngest workers who will be honored are in their 80s. Some are a century old. Of the millions of women who performed exceptional service during the war, just dozens have survived long enough to see their work recognized with one of the nation's highest honors.
One of those women is Susan King, who at the age of 99 is still wielding a rivet gun like she did when building war planes in Baltimore's Eastern Aircraft Factory. King was 18 when she first started at the factory. She was one of 20 million workers who were credentialed as defense workers and hired to fill the jobs men left behind once they were drafted into war.
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More than 2 million federal employees face a looming deadline: By midnight on Thursday, they must decide whether to accept a "deferred resignation" offer from the Trump administration. If workers accept, according to a White House plan, they would continue getting paid through September but would be excused from reporting for duty. But if they opt to keep their jobs, they could get fired.
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More employees of the Environmental Protection Agency were informed Wednesday that their jobs appear in doubt. Senior leadership at the EPA held an all-staff meeting to tell individuals that President Trump's executive order, "Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing," which was responsible for the closure of the agency's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion office, will likely lead to the shuttering of the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights as well.
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In her first hours as attorney general, Pam Bondi issued a broad slate of directives that included a Justice Department review of the prosecutions of President Trump, a reorientation of department work to focus on harsher punishments, actions punishing so-called "sanctuary" cities and an end to diversity initiatives at the department.