Why not bring back the Spoils System while we're at it?
(The Guardian) Trump plans civil service purge if returned to the White House: report
If voters were to elect Donald Trump to another term in the 2024 presidential election, he is considering using bureaucratic maneuvers to remove potentially tens of thousands of civil servants across the US government and replace them with people who adhere to his ideology, according to a report from Axios.
That Trump expects his deputies to be unfailingly loyal to him is no secret, but during his time in the White House, they didn’t always do what he wanted. He intends to change that dramatically in a second term, according to the report, appointing staunch cabinet members and changing civil service regulations to allow him to dismiss up to 50,000 employees. He would replace these bureaucrats, who typically hold onto their jobs through presidential administrations, with people handpicked to support his “America first” ideology.
Groups connected to him such as the Center for Renewing America and Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official who Trump tried to install as attorney general but backed down after senior staff threatened a revolt, are already working to identify candidates, the report said.
Here’s more from Axios on how the plan would work: Trump signed an executive order, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” in October 2020, which established a new employment category for federal employees. It received wide media coverage for a short period, then was largely forgotten in the mayhem and aftermath of Jan. 6 — and quickly was rescinded by President Biden.
Sources close to Trump say that if he were elected to a second term, he would immediately reimpose it.
Tens of thousands of civil servants who serve in roles deemed to have some influence over policy would be reassigned as “Schedule F” employees. Upon reassignment, they would lose their employment protections.
New presidents typically get to replace more than 4,000 so-called “political” appointees to oversee the running of their administrations. But below this rotating layer of political appointees sits a mass of government workers who enjoy strong employment protections — and typically continue their service from one administration to the next, regardless of the president’s party affiliation.
An initial estimate by the Trump official who came up with Schedule F found it could apply to as many as 50,000 federal workers — a fraction of a workforce of more than 2 million, but a segment with a profound role in shaping American life.
Trump, in theory, could fire tens of thousands of career government officials with no recourse for appeals. He could replace them with people he believes are more loyal to him and to his “America First” agenda.
Even if Trump did not deploy Schedule F to this extent, the very fact that such power exists could create a significant chilling effect on government employees.
It would effectively upend the modern civil service, triggering a shock wave across the bureaucracy. The next president might then move to gut those pro-Trump ranks — and face the question of whether to replace them with her or his own loyalists, or revert to a traditional bureaucracy.
(The Guardian) Trump plans civil service purge if returned to the White House: report
If voters were to elect Donald Trump to another term in the 2024 presidential election, he is considering using bureaucratic maneuvers to remove potentially tens of thousands of civil servants across the US government and replace them with people who adhere to his ideology, according to a report from Axios.
That Trump expects his deputies to be unfailingly loyal to him is no secret, but during his time in the White House, they didn’t always do what he wanted. He intends to change that dramatically in a second term, according to the report, appointing staunch cabinet members and changing civil service regulations to allow him to dismiss up to 50,000 employees. He would replace these bureaucrats, who typically hold onto their jobs through presidential administrations, with people handpicked to support his “America first” ideology.
Groups connected to him such as the Center for Renewing America and Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official who Trump tried to install as attorney general but backed down after senior staff threatened a revolt, are already working to identify candidates, the report said.
Here’s more from Axios on how the plan would work: Trump signed an executive order, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” in October 2020, which established a new employment category for federal employees. It received wide media coverage for a short period, then was largely forgotten in the mayhem and aftermath of Jan. 6 — and quickly was rescinded by President Biden.
Sources close to Trump say that if he were elected to a second term, he would immediately reimpose it.
Tens of thousands of civil servants who serve in roles deemed to have some influence over policy would be reassigned as “Schedule F” employees. Upon reassignment, they would lose their employment protections.
New presidents typically get to replace more than 4,000 so-called “political” appointees to oversee the running of their administrations. But below this rotating layer of political appointees sits a mass of government workers who enjoy strong employment protections — and typically continue their service from one administration to the next, regardless of the president’s party affiliation.
An initial estimate by the Trump official who came up with Schedule F found it could apply to as many as 50,000 federal workers — a fraction of a workforce of more than 2 million, but a segment with a profound role in shaping American life.
Trump, in theory, could fire tens of thousands of career government officials with no recourse for appeals. He could replace them with people he believes are more loyal to him and to his “America First” agenda.
Even if Trump did not deploy Schedule F to this extent, the very fact that such power exists could create a significant chilling effect on government employees.
It would effectively upend the modern civil service, triggering a shock wave across the bureaucracy. The next president might then move to gut those pro-Trump ranks — and face the question of whether to replace them with her or his own loyalists, or revert to a traditional bureaucracy.
