Trump’s Targeting of ‘Deep State’ Employees Set for Comeback

Federal workers are set to become targets of President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to re-up policies aimed at rooting out employees he’s derided as part of a “deep state” intent on undermining his agenda.

Trump in 2020 issued an executive order making it easier to fire career government employees by placing them under Schedule F, a new employment category which lacks the civil service protections they would otherwise have.

President Joe Biden scrapped the order after taking office, and the White House Office of Personnel Management has since sought to establish further protections.

But Trump has pledged to revive the Schedule F effort on his first day back in office to fire “rogue bureaucrats” — a plan that would reshape the federal workforce and inject fresh mistrust between political officials and the career employees that keep the government running.

“Federal employees would not be irrational to be very concerned about the state of things,” said Stuart Shapiro, dean of Rutgers University’s Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy.

It remains to be seen how quickly OPM could unwind the newly established protections. Shapiro said the process should “theoretically” take at least a year, but the Trump administration “is not terribly wedded to procedure.”

“I can see them taking some shortcuts to try to eliminate the regulation quickly,” Shapiro said. “In the meantime, they will do everything they can to encourage people to leave and to try and drastically move the workforce from what it is now to one more akin to a 19th century spoils system,” Shapiro said, referring to a system where victorious political parties give their supporters government jobs.

A spokesman for Trump’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The president-elect’s allies already have suggestions for who should be on the chopping block when Trump takes office. The American Accountability Foundation, for example, last month released a “watch list” of career employees at the Justice and Homeland Security departments whom it views as likely to hinder Trump’s immigration agenda. The group plans to expand the list.

Trump ‘Deep-State’ Purge Vow Boosted by Heritage-Funded List

Trump’s plans have federal workers and the unions that represent them on edge. Federal workers “will continue to do their jobs regardless of who sits in the White House,” Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees union, said in a statement Wednesday morning. But Kelley warned about Trump’s previous moves to strip their rights.

“Make no mistake: our union will not stand by and let any political leader — regardless of their political affiliation — run roughshod over the Constitution and our laws,” Kelley said. “Federal and D.C. government employees should be able to do their jobs without political interference, without violating their constitutional oath, and without breaking the law.”

‘Loyalists’

Supporters of Schedule F maintain the change to federal employment categories is necessary to allow the government to more easily terminate poor performers.

Trump’s order “gave agencies greater flexibility in hiring, and eliminated appeals when dismissing, federal employees in senior policy-influencing positions,” the America First Policy Institute told the White House last year. The conservative group is staffed by many former Trump administration officials and expected to hold considerable sway in his next term.

Critics say Schedule F, depending on how the Trump administration shapes it when he returns to office, could sweep in tens of thousands of federal employees.

“The point of Schedule F is to get civil servants to be faithful to Trump as a person, regardless of whether what he wants is lawful or unlawful,” William Ford, policy advocate at Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group that says it’s focused on defeating authoritarianism, said in an interview.

Schedule F would also make it easier to hire the types of “loyalists” the Trump administration wants to hire, Ford said.

Former government officials this fall told lawmakers they were concerned a revival of Schedule F would politicize decision making on high-stakes issues such as election security, competition with China, and supply chain resilience.

“I’m opposed to any decision that has high potential to undermine effective national security policy and operations. I am concerned that Schedule F will do just that,” former Department of Homeland Security official Elaine Duke told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in September.

Duke was a longtime career employee who became the department’s deputy secretary and acting secretary for part of Trump’s first term.

Worker Protections

Jacqueline Simon, policy director at AFGE, said Wednesday that the union would do everything it could to preserve members’ rights, including going to Congress.

“With this Congress, I don’t think expanding our rights is going to be on a realistic agenda,” she said. “But there are members of both parties in Congress who are union supporters and supporters of apolitical civil service and we know we can work with them.”

Republicans flipped enough seats Tuesday to win control of the Senate; it remains to be seen whether they retain a majority in the House.

George Chuzi, who represents federal workers for Kalijarvi, Chuzi, Newman & Fitch, P.C., said the courts might be the only path for recourse for civil servants. Case law mandates that agency employees should have advanced notice, due process, and the right to an appeal.

“Those could be potential limitations for a Trump administration,” Chuzi said. “The Supreme Court is not typically something we look towards for protections here, but there might even be some things that are too much for them.”