Trump has repeatedly been frustrated by career civil servants who are by definition protected from political vendettas. Unlike political appointees, they can only be removed for cause. Political appointees serve at the pleasure of the president or the political boss who hired them. When I served in the first Bush administration from 1991-1993, the civil servants referred to us political appointees as the “Christmas help.” They knew that after the next election, or the one after that, we would all be gone.
Before the federal civil service was established in 1871, all government jobs were patronage. There was a saying that “to the victor goes the spoils,” and the spoils were the many thousands of jobs in government that could be handed out to campaign workers and cronies. The establishment of the civil service assured that there would be a nonpartisan career staff in every agency, and that they would be directed by the political appointees, the policy makers who had no guaranteed tenure of office.
But Trump wants to strip away civil service protections from many career civil servants so he can exercise more control and replace career professionals with political loyalists. This is the goal of an autocrat.
President Trump this week fired his biggest broadside yet against the federal bureaucracy by issuing an executive order that would remove job security from an estimated tens of thousands of civil servants and dramatically remake the government.
The directive, issued late Wednesday, strips long-held civil service protections from employees whose work involves policymaking, allowing them to be dismissed with little cause or recourse, much like the political appointees who come and go with each administration.
Federal scientists, attorneys, regulators, public health experts and many others in senior roles would lose rights to due process and in some cases, union representation, at agencies across the government. The White House declined to say how many jobs would be swept into a class of employees with fewer civil service rights, but civil service experts and union leaders estimated anywhere from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands in a workforce of 2.1 million.
It would be a profound reimagining of the career workforce, but one that may end up as a statement of purpose rather than anything else. The order fast-tracks a process that gives agencies until Jan. 19 to review potentially affected jobs. That’s a day before the next presidential inauguration. An administration under Democratic nominee Joe Biden would be unlikely to allow the changes to proceed.…
“I am calling this a declaration of war on the civil service,” said Richard Loeb, senior policy counsel for the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing federal workers.
Political appointees ultimately call the shots on policy direction, but career employees advise them on how to follow the law and implement their priorities.
Tensions are common. But in the Trump era, they have reached a fever pitch in many offices, as career employees chafe at an agenda that has upended Washington. Political appointees have come to view many civil servants with suspicion.
If this executive order were implemented, Trump could fire Dr. Anthony Fauci and other experts who have worked for the federal government for decades, impervious to political interference.
A follow-up story in the Washington Post reported that Trump’s executive order was in the works for nearly four years.
President Trump’s extraordinary directive allowing his administration to weed out career federal employees viewed as disloyal in a second term is the product of a four-year campaign by conservatives working from a little-known West Wing policy shop.
Soon after Trump took office, a young aide hired from the Heritage Foundation with bold ideas for reining in the sprawling bureaucracy of 2.1 million came up with a blueprint. Trump would hold employees accountable, sideline their labor unions and give the president more power to hire and fire them, much like political appointees.
The plan was a counterweight to the “deep state” Trump believed was out to disrupt his agenda. Coordinating labor policy for the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, James Sherk presented his bosses with a 19-page to-do list titled “Proposed Labor Reforms.” A top category was “Creating a government that serves the people.”
The result this week threatens to be the most significant assault on the nonpartisan civil service in its 137-year history: a sweeping executive order that strips job protections from employees in policy roles across the government. Exactly which roles would be affected will be up to personnel officials at federal agencies, who were tasked on Friday with reviewing all of their jobs and deciding who would qualify.
The order, a year in the making after delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic, came less than two weeks before Trump will ask voters for a second term.
Still, it was not a last-minute idea or presidential whim. Rather, the wonky-sounding “Executive Order on Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service” is a crowning achievement of conservative policy on the civil service.
Civil service experts and union leaders have assailed the order as an effort to impose political loyalty tests on a nonpartisan workforce. The directive likely would not survive if Joe Biden is elected president.
A day after issuing a directive crafted in such secrecy that senior officials across the government had no idea it was coming, Trump railed to donors that he presides over a government of miscreants.
“Somebody said, President, what’s the toughest country to deal with? Is it Russia? Is it China? Is it North Korea?” Trump told attendees at a fundraiser before Thursday’s debate in Nashville, saying it was harder to deal with officials inside his own government than with North Korea or Russia, according to one person who was there.
“No, the toughest country by far is dealing with the United States,” Trump said. “It’s true. These people are sick.”
The president went on to denigrate civil servants who served in government before his election. “Well, you have a lot of people from past administrations, and they’re civil service. I fired some,” he said, referring to his efforts to purge several career diplomats and others who testified against him during last year’s impeachment hearings.
“I say some, just get rid of them,” the president continued. “We had a lot of them come to the floor during the impeachment hoax. You see them coming in with their bow ties and everything. It’s a weird deal,” Trump said. “We have some pretty deep-set, deep-seated people — we got a lot of them, and we got rid of a lot of them.”
Trump’s obsession with government employees he believes are against him has grown in recent months after his impeachment trial and the publication of the anonymous book “A Warning,” said four officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The book is a critical account of the Trump administration written by an unnamed person described as a senior administration official.
This has Steve Bannon written all over it. We are in for a fire storm on Jan 20th and it doesn’t matter who gets sworn in. If Biden wins, he can rescind the EO but the damage done by Jan 19th will take years to fix. If trump wins…well, we know what will keep happening.
Nah, this has Trump, the transactional thinker, written all over it: elections have consequences! You on the coast? In a Dem-run city? Eat dirt, no fed $ for you. Now add: In a public employee union? you involved in policy implementation? Hahaha, just cut you off at the knees. You want decent working conditions/ salary/ bennies/ protection from at-whim firing?: talk to the party boss. Tell him what you can do for us.
This is mobbed-up, Tammany Hall stuff: what Trump grew up with: his comfort zone.
Wake me up when the dial is turned back to the 21stC.
BTW: couldn’t Biden just leave that EO in place, fire all the Trump toadies, re-hire the career employees (or replace as desired)– and then rescind the EO? 60 days might be just enough time, if he’s got the plan in place!
It doesn’t work that way. Work stops mean benefits changes, retirement issues, pension issues, security issues etc. Appointments need to be “approved”. Government is a big mess caused by those who seek to destroy it and it has gotten worse every time the Senate is majority GOP. We have a raging pandemic happening and to try and undo all the excess damages done in a short amount of time just cannot happen. My gosh, the clowns can’t get together for a stimulus deal to help the American people. The sky is falling for millions of Americans, but it’s OK…the stock market keeps rising (but then dropping) while those in power keep sucking the life out of the public.
I hope this attack is not some scam to try to privatize more functions of government. That would be terrible mistake. We need federal workers that are free from the influence of politics. The Commerce Department, for example, is in charge of the Census. In addition to the data collected every ten years, the government collects lots of other sensitive economic and health related data. The Post Office, as we know, transports votes and other sensitive personal information. These agencies must never fall into the hands of profiteers and other special interest groups. We have seen what happens when the President’s Cabinet falls into the hands of those with special interests. We need a vibrant, functioning public sector that can keep private interests at arm’s length in order for democracy to work.
The scariest example I can think of would be to privatize the CIA. We would have no national security! Global business leaders would collude to maximize profits, not serve the national interests and the safety of their citizens. People should never believe that business people have the interests of the people or their country as a priority. Their main objective is profit above all else.
The CIA is already partly privatized. They already contract out to companies like Google and Amazon, which, coincidentally, of course, also happen to have mountains of data on billions of people. And of course, there is never any data sharing.😀
I don’t see privatization of govt employees as having anything to do with it. This is old-timey, Tammany Hall style patronage, as I suggested above: Trump’s comfort-zone. Privatization is not necessarily his thing: it’s a tool loved by small-govt types & neoliberals, to whom Trump is connected through political coalition. His thing is power & control. He’ll go w/privatization on national policies suggested by his cabinet sec’y’s. But their bureaucracies are his turf (as he sees it), & their employees needed to implement those policies– they’re his serfs, to do w/as he will.
Different groups can have very different motivations, but work together because the overall approach achieves the individual goals of the different groups.
The privatizers see an opportunity.
It’s like the rationale given for invading Iraq.
WMD was just the reason everyone agreed on because it sounded plausible at the time.
The invasions architect, Paul Woefulwitz, even admitted as much.
This is all in line with the GOP hatred for government built-in to the “limited government/ personal responsibility/lower taxes/deregulation” meme that GOPers repeat over and over and over ad nauseam. Reagan weaponized the government-is-the-enemy propaganda, Grover Norquist spread the anti-government toxin with his bathtub comparison and Newt Gingrich is no friend to functioning user friendly government. Now Trump is going hog wild destroying what is decent and good in government. We will be very fortunate if we are rid of this disgusting festering pustule (Trump) in 2021.
I agree w/your analysis of the jackals running the GOP these days, but I don’t think this Trump EO connects precisely to that. Keep in mind Trump has only recently been a conservative; that’s not exactly where he comes from. He is purely transactional, & his comfort-zone is more akin to the old-timey corrupt, mobbed-up, Dem-associated patronage tradition. That’s what this smacks of to me.
Right. Trump has no principles, no values, no ideals, other than himself and his family. He was a registered Democrat until 2009. It must have been his racist hatred of Obama that led him to switch.
Principal Values
Lots of principals*
Just no values
Barr invincibles
Crony pal views
Roger Stone, William Barr, Rudy Giuliani, etc.
Limited government (GOP style): The TRump Administration shut down a vaccine safety office last year. What’s the plan now?
The office was dedicated to the long term safety of vaccines.
~ Another genius move by the same GOP mob that also shut down the Pandemic Response Team early in 2018.
The Republican Party is the party of Oligarchs. Government is fine as long as they get to run and benefit from it.
1984 was not meant to be a how-to manual.
When the boss is a malignant narcissist: https://qz.com/work/1919542/
Kayleigh MacEnany kept her cool when questioned about this. That’s why people are calling her Miss Demeanor.
McEnany
The MacNanny for MacTrump.
Every day with Trump, another outrage.
It’s as though he gets up in the morning and thinks (if you can call it thinking), what can I make totally FUBAR today?
So true.
Many of Trump’s executive orders have been challenged in the courts and many have lost. This executive order, for sure, is also headed to the courts.
The Institute for Policy Integrity tracks the outcomes of litigation over the Trump administration’s use of agencies to deregulate as well as to implement its other policies. This Roundup includes litigation over agency actions such as regulations, guidance documents, and agency memoranda.
Unsuccessful
An outcome is considered unsuccessful for the Trump administration if a court ruled against the agency or the relevant agency withdrew the action after being sued. If there are different rulings on the same agency action, the entry is assigned an “X” as long as one court ruled against the agency.
Successful
An outcome is considered successful for the Trump administration if the agency won the lawsuit without having to withdraw the challenged action.
Successful outcomes for the Trump administration 23
Unsuccessful outcomes for the Trump administration 121
https://policyintegrity.org/trump-court-roundup
That is an 84% loss rate for Trump’s administration of fascists and frauds.
Lloyd.The website is useful but it also says:
The Roundup does not include litigation over self-implementing presidential memoranda or executive orders or over project-level decisions. Among all of the court cases, only two refer to Trump’s executive orders.
In other words, this is a good source for some information but executive orders are usually written with an expiration date and to avoid a conflict with other laws.
In the meantime at least one official in charge of salaries for civil service employees has resigned “as a matter of conscience” and in recognition of the Trump’s executive order that allows for positions to be filled with politically compliant people and with merit-based hires totally trashed.
Here is the letter of resignation in protest of Trump’s Executive Order that will politicize the civil service.
https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000175-65e6-dd19-a175-6de70cc80000
The ghouls who have found Trump so useful for almost four years now–who have found that they can rape and pillage to their tiny hearts’ content with him in office–have doubtless been wanting this gutting of protections for civil service employees for some time. Only about 11 percent of employees in the US are unionized now, most of those are government employees, and the servants of the oligarchs have been for those with so-called “Right to Work” legislation and the Janus decision. But all this had to wait for the Idiot to become personally incensed enough about his inability to control everything that civil service people think, do, and say because, of course, all that matters to Trump is Trump. The key to manipulating the gross orange marionette–making it person for him.
For those of you in NYC, the next time you walk through Madison Square Park, stop, reflect, and pay homage to the statue of Chester A. Arthur, the unlikely patron of George Pendleton’s civil service bill.