Vance made that point in a podcast as he ran for the Senate, his first elected office. His office did not respond to questions about the statement, but the response from Trump’s campaign made clear that a purge is planned. Republicans have long favored hiring more private companies to do government work, but Trump has also taken a particular swipe at the career bureaucrats he accuses of blocking his agenda during his first term.
“President Trump and Senator J.D. Vance will take swift and unprecedented action to protect Americans from the out-of-control deep state, oust rogue bureaucrats and career politicians, and return power to the American people,” Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, said via email. She concluded with a quote from Trump from a campaign video: ““I will break the deep state and restore a government controlled by the people.”
Let’s assume that Vance’s remarks are the speech of a novice politician who knows nothing about how the federal government works. But that shouldn’t apply to past presidents, including Trump, whose tenure has been marked by repeated attacks on federal workers and especially the unions that represent them.
The labeling of federal employees as swamp dwellers and deep state denizens defines Trump’s approach to the workplace. His Agenda 47 outlines “my plan to dismantle the deep state and reclaim our democracy from Washington’s 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.”
The controversial order, which was never fully implemented by the Trump administration and was then quickly The order, which President Biden revoked, created “Schedule F,” a federal employment category with “an exception to the hiring rules and examinations for career positions.” For workers in that category, the order also eliminated civil service protections, which allow federal employees to use due process to appeal firings and other disciplinary actions.
“The merit-based civil service system does not appear to match the … loyalty seen as necessary to carry out the agenda of a second Trump administration,” Marcus L. Hill, president of the Senior Executives Association, said in an email.
Without competitive hiring and an increased ability to fire federal workers more quickly, administration officials would have more power to pack agencies with political favorites—“our people,” in Vance’s words. Importantly, civil service due process protects not only civil servants but also the public from government actions unduly influenced by political bias. While the influential Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 calls for the reinstatement of Schedule F, the right-wing think tank acknowledges that workplace protections were “intended to ensure that expert merit rather than partisan favor or personal favoritism reigns within the federal bureaucracy.”
Schedule F has drawn sharp criticism from many government experts. Treating federal workers “as just one part of a never-ending campaign is a recipe for disaster,” Terry W. Gerton, president and chief executive officer of the National Academy of Public Administration, said in an email. “Federal workers serve the people, not the president, and are sworn to support and defend the Constitution. Asking them to do otherwise undermines the foundations of more than 200 years of democracy.”
Agenda 47 would also require “every federal employee to pass a new civil service test demonstrating an understanding of our constitutionally limited government,” even as Trump seeks to expand his executive power. It would also relocate agencies “immediately out of Washington to places filled with patriots who love America,” despite the fact that about 85 percent of federal workers are already located outside the Washington region. moved the Bureau of Land Management offices to Colorado during his first term, a decision That Biden rescinded, the Government Accountability Office found that offshoring led to staff shortages, drove away experienced staff and reduced diversity.
In 2018, three executive orders gutted the ability of federal labor organizations to represent not just their members, but all employees in a bargaining unit covered by a union contract. President Biden quickly revoked those directives upon taking office. The section of Trump’s agenda on dismantling the deep state does not specifically mention those orders, but Project 2025 said they “should be reinstated by the next administration.”
This thought leaves Union leaders like Randy L. Erwin are trembling. “Trump has signed three executive orders that have collectively destroyed federal labor relations,” said the president of the National Federation of Federal Employees. “It’s frightening to think what a second Trump administration would attempt to do to inflict pain on federal workers and their unions. … Trump didn’t have the means to wreak havoc last time. He has his plan ready this time. It’s called Project 2025.”
Two unions that evaluated Vance on his legislative record gave him dismal marks: 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 Paul Dans, Trump’s chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management. Spencer Chrétien, associate director of Project 2025, was associate director of presidential personnel in the Trump White House. Additionally, the initiative’s chapter on the federal workforce was co-authored by Dans and advocates for federal workforce policies that have been vigorously advocated by Trump and Republicans generally for years.
“Contractors are cheaper,” Project 2025 argues, parroting a well-known Republican argument for cutting federal payrolls, “because they don’t qualify for 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 and Heritage’s labor agenda by saying, “Never in the history of the NTEU have federal employees been the target of such a coordinated attack on their integrity, qualifications, patriotism, and dedication. … These extremists are attempting to politicize public service for their own political gain.”
washingtonpost
