While Donald Trump’s agenda and a massive think tank document clearly indicate his second-term strategy for federal workers, nothing captures those plans as succinctly as a statement made by his running mate.
If Sen. JD Vance (Ohio), the Republican vice-presidential nominee, were to give Trump “one piece of advice,” he said in 2021, it would be “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state. Replace them with our people.”
Vance pushed that line on a podcast, when he was running for the Senate, his first elective post. His office did not reply to questions about the statement, but the Trump campaign’s response makes it clear that a purge is the plan. Republicans have long favored hiring more private companies to do government work, but Trump has also taken particular exception to career bureaucrats he blames for blocking his agenda in his first term.
“President Trump and Sen. JD Vance will take swift and unprecedented action to protect Americans from the out-of-control Deep State, fire rogue bureaucrats and career politicians, and return power back to the American people,” Karoline Leavitt, the Trump’s campaign national press secretary, said by email. She concluded with a Trump quote from a campaign video: “I will shatter the Deep State, and restore government that is controlled by the People.”
Let’s assume Vance’s remarks were the ramblings of a rookie politician, who knew nothing about how the federal government works. That shouldn’t apply, however, to former presidents, including Trump, whose term was marked by repeated attacks on federal workers and particularly the unions representing them.
Essentially calling federal employees swamp dwellers and deep state denizens defines Trump’s approach to the workforce. His Agenda47 outlines “my plan to dismantle the deep state and reclaim our democracy from Washington corruption once and for all. … I will immediately reissue my 2020 Executive Order restoring the President’s authority to remove rogue bureaucrats. And I will wield that power very aggressively.”
That controversial order, which was never fully implemented by the Trump administration and then was quickly revoked by President Biden, created “Schedule F,” a federal employment category with “an exception to the competitive hiring rules and examinations for career positions.” For workers in that category, the order also eliminated civil service protections, which allow feds due process procedures to appeal terminations and other disciplinary actions.
“The merit-based, civil service system appears not to align with the … loyalty viewed as necessary to fulfill a second Trump administration agenda,” Marcus L. Hill, president of the Senior Executives Association, said by email.
Without competitive hiring and with increased ability to fire feds faster, administration officials would have more power to stock agencies with political favorites - “our people,” in Vance’s words. Importantly, civil service due process protects not just civil servants, but also the public from government actions unduly influenced by political prejudice. Even as the influential Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 calls for Schedule F to be reinstated, the right-wing think tank acknowledges the workplace protections were “meant to ensure that expert merit rather than partisan favors or personal favoritism ruled within the federal bureaucracy.”
Schedule F has drawn harsh criticism from many government experts. To treat the federal workforce “as just another element of a never-ending campaign is a recipe for disaster,” said Terry W. Gerton, president and CEO of the National Academy of Public Administration, said in an email. “The federal workforce serves the people, not the president, and takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Asking them to do otherwise weakens the foundations of more than 200 years of democracy.”
Agenda47 also would “require every federal employee to pass a new Civil Service test demonstrating an understanding of our Constitutional limited government,” even as Trump seeks increased executive power. He also would relocate agencies “immediately out of Washington to places filled with patriots who love America,” despite the fact that about 85 percent of feds already are outside of the D.C. region. After Trump moved Bureau of Land Management offices to Colorado during his first term, a decision which Biden reversed, the Government Accountability Office found the relocation led to staffing shortages, drove away experienced staffers and slashed diversity.
Three 2018 Trump executive orders gutted federal labor organizations’ ability to represent not just their members, but all the employees in a bargaining unit covered by a union contract. President Biden quickly revoked those directives when he took office. Trump’s agenda section on his dismantling of the deep state doesn’t specifically mention the orders, but Project 2025 declared they “should be reinstated by the next Administration.”
That thought leaves labor leaders like Randy L. Erwin shuddering. “Trump signed three executive orders that collectively wrecked labor-relations in the federal sector,” said the president of the National Federation of Federal Employees. “It is scary to think what a second Trump Administration would attempt do to inflict pain on federal employees and their unions. … Trump didn’t have his act together to wreak havoc last time around. He’s got his plan ready this time. It’s called Project 2025.”
Two unions that rated Vance on his legislative record gave him abysmal ratings: 29 percent by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) and 13 percent by the American Federation of Government Employees.
Although Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, it is led by director Paul Dans, an Office of Personnel Management chief of staff under Trump. Spencer Chretien, a Project 2025 associate director, was a Trump White House associate director of presidential personnel. Furthermore, the initiative’s chapter related to the federal workforce was co-authored by Dans and advocates for federal workforce policies that have been vigorously pushed by Trump and Republicans generally for years.
“Contractors are less expensive,” Project 2025 says, echoing a familiar Republican argument for reducing the federal workforce, “because they are not entitled to high government pensions or benefits and are easier to fire and discipline.”
Defending government workers, while harshly criticizing “the plot to demonize their service,” NTEU President Doreen Greenwald summed up Trump’s and Heritage’s workforce plans by saying “never in NTEU’s history have federal employees been the target of such a coordinated attack on their integrity, their qualifications, their patriotism and their dedication. … These extremists try to politicize the civil service for their own political gain.”
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