Experts expect “heads on spikes to make an example” once Trump takes office

As some of President-elect Donald Trump’s allies vow to dismantle entire federal departments and the new administration lays the groundwork for mass layoffs, experts say Trump will likely begin targeted layoffs to make an example of certain officials as he the situation will test in his second term.

As the new Trump administration lays the groundwork for changing the rules to allow mass firing of civil servants, Don Kettl, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, told Salon that he is doing so calculates First, try to give an example of some important goals.

“Henry VIII didn’t have to kill everyone, he just had to kill a few,” Kettl said. “All he needed was a few heads on spikes to make an example of.”

The Heritage Foundation, for example, has circulated a list of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services targets that it believes are “in league with left-wing open-border groups” and would like to be removed from public service . Kettl said Trump’s allies likely had similar lists for the Environmental Protection Agency and the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, as well as other agencies that the president and his allies found insufficiently loyal in his first term.

“Only a fool would attempt to lay off large numbers of federal employees,” Kettl said. “It’s one thing to throw sand in the federal government’s gears, it’s another to try to destroy it.”

However, the first steps toward mass layoffs or targeted exemplary measures will be the same – resuming a policy first introduced in October 2020 through a presidential executive order that establishes an employment category called “Schedule F.”

In the federal government, civil servants are divided into different employment categories. In 2020, Trump created Appendix F as a new classification for people whose roles are “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating in nature.”

For those who want to dismantle the administrative state or certain departments, the important part is that Schedule F civil servants would not enjoy the same employment protections afforded to most civil servants and would instead be at-will employees who could be easily fired.

Many estimates put the number at around 50,000 federal employees whose positions could be reclassified to Schedule F. But the National Treasury Employee Union has warned that the number of potential List F officials could be much higher, according to its review of Trump-era documents from the Office of Management and Budget.

Critics view the plan as a return to the spoils system, in which a political figure would reward loyalists with government positions, and a departure from the meritocratic civil service that has existed in one form or another since the Pendleton Act was passed in 1883 The passage of the law makes it illegal to fire selected officials for political reasons. Appendix F would serve to circumvent these protections.

President Joe Biden introduced federal regulations earlier this year aimed at preventing Trump from reinstating Schedule F through the Office of Personnel Management. But because these regulations were issued by the executive branch rather than the legislature, Kettl said, Trump will likely be able to reverse them very quickly.

“Anything that is included in the ordinance can be removed by ordinance,” Kettl told Salon. “If they wanted to, they could implement an interim final rule at 12:30 p.m. on January 20.”

Once in power, Kettl explained, the question for the Trump administration will be: “What kind of signals does it want to send and what kind of legal process does it want to go through?”

Ronald Sanders, a senior fellow at George Washington University’s Center for Excellence in Public Leadership who has worked on nine presidential transitions and held positions throughout the federal government, told Salon that there is a difference between Schedule F and the power the president has over the rest of the federal government Federal government maintains, insists The new government has laid the foundation for first laying off employees and solving outstanding problems later.

“In short, it’s pretty complicated, but if the Trump administration wanted to ride roughshod over this and basically say, ‘You’re fired,’ they could leave it all up to the Merit Systems Protection Board and the courts, and that’s my suspicion will happen,” Sanders said.

However, according to Sanders, there are reasons why the Trump administration might choose not to carry out mass layoffs initially. The first reason is that even Republicans don’t want “large numbers of fired officers in their districts.”

Second, the combination of the threat of Appendix F, which promises a relocation of government positions from Washington DC, and the introduction of political considerations into previously meritocratic roles could be enough to provoke mass resignations.

The American Federation of Government Employees has warned of this, and the union’s political director, Jacqueline Simon, told the Hill that she expects an “exodus.”

“They don’t want to be political candidates. They don’t want politics to interfere in any aspect of their work,” Simon said.

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Sanders noted that such an exodus could be just as destructive to administrators, without being subject to the same legal scrutiny as mass layoffs. Sanders said that in such a scenario, often those people who leave public service voluntarily find the most attractive job offers elsewhere or are nearing retirement, meaning an exodus would erode institutional memory in those departments.

Several legal gray areas will likely need to be resolved in court and could complicate a plan to reclassify tens of thousands of officials on Schedule F or fire them. Encouraging voluntary resignations would not have the same problems.

In Sanders’ view, the biggest legal question is whether veterans would retain their right to appeal a discharge even if their position were reclassified to Schedule F. Given that veterans make up 30% of the federal workforce, this presents a significant complication.

Sanders, who resigned as chairman of the Federal Salary Council during the first Trump administration due to Schedule F, noted that he was an “unabashed Republican” but worried about “an ulterior motive” behind the staffing changes.

While supporters of Appendix F say the policy is intended to ensure that the federal government is responsive to elections, Sanders said he is concerned that the changes are intended to ensure loyalty and “to keep these agencies from being understaffed to do their jobs.” complete”.

Sanders also said that introducing such a level of political deference into public service positions, regardless of intent, would jeopardize the advice that administration officials give.

“Public officials have the power to give candid and fearless advice to their political bosses,” Sanders said. “You want them to tell a political appointee what they think they want to hear – you want them to tell the truth.”