Deplorable:
With a blizzard of executive orders, President Donald Trump has jump-started an extraordinary plan to transform the federal government into a leaner operation packed with his loyalists.
The fine print of those directives reveals how shrewdly the new administration is exploiting — and sometimes outright ignoring — the arcane laws, rules and regulations that have long protected the civil service of 2.3 million from a political takeover.
Trump has skirted Biden-era rules by essentially declaring them unlawful, used probationary periods to place masses of civil servants in limbo and issued a memo lifting restrictions on hiring temporary political appointees to replace thousands of career employees. The White House has even declared that Trump can overrule a post-Watergate law to summarily fire senior executives and career prosecutors, citing a sweeping claim of executive authority.
Late Friday, when Trump ousted 17 federal watchdogs, he disregarded a statute requiring him to first provide 30 days’ notice and a performance-related justification to Congress.
🏛️
Follow Politics
White House directives also have instructed federal agencies to seek ways to bring employees back to the office even if union contracts guarantee work-from-home protections and announced plans to reinstate assessments for hiring that were thrown out by the Carter administration after lawsuits claimed they were discriminatory. And acting personnel officials have widely expanded the use of paid leave to push workers out — despite a bipartisan law seeking to curtail its use.
The executive actions, absent any legislation from the GOP-controlled Congress, already have had far-reaching effects, even if they face potential legal challenges. Thousands of staff in diversity and inclusion programs are facing layoffs as soon as this week, thousands of other job offers have been rescinded in a government-wide hiring freeze and gaping senior-level holes remain at numerous agencies because of purges and an exodus of experienced staff.
Advertisement
The sweeping changes reflect Trump’s campaign pledge to “dismantle the deep state” by firing bureaucrats he blamed for thwarting his first-term agenda. His executive orders could transform an experienced, merit-based federal bureaucracy into one governed by employees with political allegiance to the Trump administration.
“These actions are opening much more of the civil service to be chosen by the Trump administration than would be usually seen during a change in administration,” said Kevin Owen, a Washington-area employment lawyer who represents federal employees.
In Trump’s first term, inexperience and chaos slowed much of his plan to weaken the civil service. But the barrage of eight executive orders and as many personnel memorandums in the opening days of his second term bears out how carefully his new administration prepared for this moment. Since Trump’s victory in November, his domestic policy team has raced to determine which interpretations of the law would be novel but legal, which might get the administration sued and which legal challenges they could accept, according to people familiar with their thinking.
“The administration is clearly better prepared this time than they were in 2016,” said Donald Moynihan, a civil service expert who teaches public policy at the University of Michigan. “They’ve been waiting for this moment, and their preparation is being turned into policy.”
Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, said on Tuesday that the president’s broad executive power allows him to fire anyone in the executive branch. “We will win in court” on any legal challenges, she added.
A senior Trump official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about White House policies, said the shake-up is designed to hold the civil service accountable, whether for performance, corruption — or a failure to carry out the president’s agenda. The official cited the government’s “many good federal employees” and denied critics’ long-held contention that the administration will use loyalty to Trump as a litmus test.
“You work hard, and who you give money to doesn’t matter,” the person said, describing two main goals for Trump’s government: “Accountability and efficiency,” which will lead to shedding jobs. “There’s a lot of fat in government to be trimmed,” the person said.
The White House said voters sent Trump back into office in part to reshape the federal workforce through bold actions.
“President Trump was given a resounding mandate from the American people to deliver on the promises he made on the campaign trail, including restoring a society based on merit, implementing commonsense policies, and reigning in unelected government bureaucrats,” deputy press secretary Kush Desai said in a statement. “He will use his executive power to deliver.”
But critics say that in his rush to reshape the government, Trump is trampling on the law — and quickly eroding more than a century of work by Congress to create a nonpartisan, skilled professional workforce that’s not beholden to any president. The administration is probably counting on many civil servants to leave rather than follow through with protracted legal fights around the methods the White House is using to force them out, experts said.
With a blizzard of executive orders, President Donald Trump has jump-started an extraordinary plan to transform the federal government into a leaner operation packed with his loyalists.
The fine print of those directives reveals how shrewdly the new administration is exploiting — and sometimes outright ignoring — the arcane laws, rules and regulations that have long protected the civil service of 2.3 million from a political takeover.
Trump has skirted Biden-era rules by essentially declaring them unlawful, used probationary periods to place masses of civil servants in limbo and issued a memo lifting restrictions on hiring temporary political appointees to replace thousands of career employees. The White House has even declared that Trump can overrule a post-Watergate law to summarily fire senior executives and career prosecutors, citing a sweeping claim of executive authority.
Late Friday, when Trump ousted 17 federal watchdogs, he disregarded a statute requiring him to first provide 30 days’ notice and a performance-related justification to Congress.
🏛️
Follow Politics
White House directives also have instructed federal agencies to seek ways to bring employees back to the office even if union contracts guarantee work-from-home protections and announced plans to reinstate assessments for hiring that were thrown out by the Carter administration after lawsuits claimed they were discriminatory. And acting personnel officials have widely expanded the use of paid leave to push workers out — despite a bipartisan law seeking to curtail its use.
The executive actions, absent any legislation from the GOP-controlled Congress, already have had far-reaching effects, even if they face potential legal challenges. Thousands of staff in diversity and inclusion programs are facing layoffs as soon as this week, thousands of other job offers have been rescinded in a government-wide hiring freeze and gaping senior-level holes remain at numerous agencies because of purges and an exodus of experienced staff.
Advertisement
The sweeping changes reflect Trump’s campaign pledge to “dismantle the deep state” by firing bureaucrats he blamed for thwarting his first-term agenda. His executive orders could transform an experienced, merit-based federal bureaucracy into one governed by employees with political allegiance to the Trump administration.
“These actions are opening much more of the civil service to be chosen by the Trump administration than would be usually seen during a change in administration,” said Kevin Owen, a Washington-area employment lawyer who represents federal employees.
In Trump’s first term, inexperience and chaos slowed much of his plan to weaken the civil service. But the barrage of eight executive orders and as many personnel memorandums in the opening days of his second term bears out how carefully his new administration prepared for this moment. Since Trump’s victory in November, his domestic policy team has raced to determine which interpretations of the law would be novel but legal, which might get the administration sued and which legal challenges they could accept, according to people familiar with their thinking.
“The administration is clearly better prepared this time than they were in 2016,” said Donald Moynihan, a civil service expert who teaches public policy at the University of Michigan. “They’ve been waiting for this moment, and their preparation is being turned into policy.”
Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, said on Tuesday that the president’s broad executive power allows him to fire anyone in the executive branch. “We will win in court” on any legal challenges, she added.
A senior Trump official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about White House policies, said the shake-up is designed to hold the civil service accountable, whether for performance, corruption — or a failure to carry out the president’s agenda. The official cited the government’s “many good federal employees” and denied critics’ long-held contention that the administration will use loyalty to Trump as a litmus test.
“You work hard, and who you give money to doesn’t matter,” the person said, describing two main goals for Trump’s government: “Accountability and efficiency,” which will lead to shedding jobs. “There’s a lot of fat in government to be trimmed,” the person said.
The White House said voters sent Trump back into office in part to reshape the federal workforce through bold actions.
“President Trump was given a resounding mandate from the American people to deliver on the promises he made on the campaign trail, including restoring a society based on merit, implementing commonsense policies, and reigning in unelected government bureaucrats,” deputy press secretary Kush Desai said in a statement. “He will use his executive power to deliver.”
But critics say that in his rush to reshape the government, Trump is trampling on the law — and quickly eroding more than a century of work by Congress to create a nonpartisan, skilled professional workforce that’s not beholden to any president. The administration is probably counting on many civil servants to leave rather than follow through with protracted legal fights around the methods the White House is using to force them out, experts said.
