“Three months before the end of his presidency, Donald Trump quietly issued Executive Order 13957, allowing the conversion of some federal civil service jobs to excepted service under a new classification, Schedule F,” reported a Spring 2024 Cato Institute publication. “If a position was reclassified, the president could fire its occupant at will and install a successor without going through the civil service hiring and placement process.
“President Joe Biden, rescinded the order two days after taking the oath of office in early 2021.”
Since then the Heritage Foundation has developed its Project 2025 agenda. Its aim is not simply to reduce the federal bureaucracy (a good idea). Rather, its goal, in part, is to remove “obstructing” civil service bureaucrats throughout government and replace them with accommodating political appointees.
“If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on Day One of the next conservative Administration,” a Project 2025 release states.
Even though many key Trump associates helped created Project 2025, Trump himself recently disavowed it. “I know nothing about Project 2025,” he posted on Truth Social. “I have no idea who is behind it.” However, his campaign’s own Agenda 47 plan would reinstate Schedule F.
A little history.
In 1883 Congress passed the Pendleton Act creating the bipartisan Civil Service Commission to oversee a hiring process based on merit, not politics. (Ironically, this move was spurred by the assassination of President James A. Garfield in 1881 over a failed political appointment.)
Over the years, different presidents moved more and more government positions under commission authority. Today 2.2 million federal civilian employees are covered with only about 4,000 political appointees as exceptions.
Although control of federal government has vacillated between Republican and Democratic control over the years, conservative Republicans believe a “deep state” of liberal bureaucrats exists that conspires to thwart conservative policies. The Cato report noted, “Trump issued the order after years of complaining that a practically conspiratorial federal bureaucracy was obstructing his agenda.”
Manning government with political loyalists rather than competent people based on merit can yield incompetent and corrupt government. In Mississippi, we only need to look at our capital city to see how that reality can manifest.
Of course, subverting civil service is only one of the highly controversial goals put forth by Project 2025. It would attempt change on “a scale never attempted before in conservative politics,” reported the New York Times.
Crawford is a syndicated columnist from Jackson.