Second Trump Term - A Primer on Schedule F and How it will Reshape Our Government

Politics & Elections
1

During Trump’s final months in office, he signed an executive order titled Executive Order on Creating Schedule F In The Excepted Service. The full text of the EO can be found by Googling the search term, ‘text Trump Schedule F executive order,’ but I’m not able to post a link here.

In short, what this Schedule F Executive Order allowed was for Trump to fundamentally reshape the federal government by reassigning up to 50,000 persons within the civil service workforce to a “Schedule F” status. Any civil servant assigned to such status would lose their customary civil service protections against arbitrary termination – and more importantly, would permit any president to stack top positions within the government with loyalists and toadies.

Biden revoked the EO shortly after taking office, but Trump intends to restore his Schedule F Executive Order immediately if he is reelected in 2024. I’d say it’s a fair bet than any Republican president will reinstate it if they gain the presidency in 2024.

Axios has published an important story explaining why all this deeply matters:

https://www.axios.com/2022/07/22/trump-2025-radical-plan-second-term

From the article:

The impact could go well beyond typical conservative targets such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Internal Revenue Service. Trump allies are working on plans that would potentially strip layers at the Justice Department — including the FBI, and reaching into national security, intelligence, the State Department and the Pentagon, sources close to the former president say.

(Emphasis theirs.)

I am a former civil servant at the state level. As such, I understand the importance of having staff members kept in place over time. What Trump repeatedly refers to as the ‘Deep State’ is simply the people in government at all levels who keep the wheels turning smoothly. They are the institutional memory of how – and most importantly, why – things are done as they are. They know the intricate ins and outs of policy, process and procedure. They are loyal to the Constitution and government process – not to any individual.

When I entered public service, I swore the same oath of office that all public servants are made to swear: I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

That oath is a promise to do the job impartially, without regard to political persuasions. It’s hard to express just how solemnly most public servants take this oath. And it matters, it really matters.

I had up-close and personal experience with how much it matters on a daily basis. As an experienced judge’s assistant, I was often sent to ‘break in’ new judges joining our bench. It didn’t matter which governor had appointed them or which party elected them. They were all treated the same.

That was my job: To help a new judge learn what he or she had to do to actually get a matter on their calendar; how to issue a bench warrant (hint, nothing happens just because you’re saying the magic words from your perch); how to bring an in-custody defendant for a proceeding before him or her.

Consistency in policies matter. What’s the process to allow television cameras in a courtroom? There’s a process for that, and it must be consistent from one courtroom to another. How do you get a particular civil case file to review it? There’s a process for that, too. You can’t just stroll into the Clerk’s Office and grab a file off the shelf.

I was a very small cog in government, but I understand how great a role civil service protections play in keeping government on a steady course. The higher up in government someone is, the more crucial these protections become.

Remember Trump’s vendettas against FBI Assistant Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence, Peter Strzok. Trump’s Schedule F Executive Order would annihilate the protections these men had from retaliation for doing their jobs. While the protections didn’t stop Trump from firing them, it protected their recourse to sue for recompense and to demonstrate that what Trump had done was wrong.

If Trump or any other Republican restores this EO, it will end government as we have come to expect it to operate.

I encourage everyone to read the Axios article and understand the implications of what we will face.

2

Then Biden should sign an EO right now forbidding any future EO from doing this. :slight_smile:

Seriously, though, what is the reach of the EO in matters like this? Could Trump just sign one giving him unilateral unreviewable power over firings in federal government? This one comes close to it, at least.

3

That’s basically what this EO does. It’s so dangerous. Such an EO in place for 4 years will essentially destroy non-partisan government at every level.

I don’t think a lot of people think about how important it is that regular government employees have protection against retaliatory or arbitrary firings. They should. The article explains the dangers in depth better than I can in a post.

4

Civil service employees are absolutely the bulwark of continuity of government across political transitions and elimination their job protections is a hallmark of despotism and emergent fascism. When you consider all of the things Trump attempted to do in his first term and was thwarted not because someone within his coterie took a principled stand against him (most internal protests seemed to result in getting fired, writing a book, and doing the cable news round table tour) but because of existing restrictions on executive authority and a government functionary just doing their job in objecting to an illegal order, you realize how important these protections are. Arbitrarily terminating or reassigning ‘inconvenient’ civil service employees (or driving them out of service and leaving absences where a suitable pliant replacement cannot be found) is very much shades of Weimar and post-Weimar era Germany.

Stranger

5

The sad thing is that I’d bet that less than 1% of American voters are aware of this. The likes of Fox News of course would never cover it, but neither would CNN because they’re incompetent and would rather talk about movie stars’ sex lives. It’s profoundly disturbing when you consider that there are already Trump loyalists scattered throughout the civil service, as evidenced by recent disclosures about the Secret Service and the draconian attitude of some CPB and ICE agents empowered by Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric.

The hopeful news is that the House added an amendment to the defense spending bill that would essentially ban any future president from meddling with the civil service in this way. This is not yet a done deal, though …

The original Schedule F order faced widespread condemnation from lawmakers—including members of both parties—good government groups, unions, employees and former government officials.

Just last week, the House adopted an amendment to the annual defense authorization bill for 2023 that would prevent future administrations from reviving Schedule F or anything like it. The provision would bar any president from unilaterally creating a new schedule within the excepted service, effectively forcing the executive branch to request that Congress make any additions via legislation. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., who has spearheaded the fight against Schedule F since Trump first introduced it and wrote the bipartisan defense bill amendment, said his measure would preserve “the expertise, and non-political loyalty, of our workforce.”

https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2022/07/schedule-f-ban-among-many-workforce-provisions-annual-policy-bill-house-just-passed/374537/

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And not just thwarting the stupid things he wanted to do. How much of what we do know about Trump’s actions are because of people in the background making sure that records were kept in accordance with federal rules? Trump would have been quite happy for all those records to have disappeared as soon as he, personally, was done with them. Would we have ever heard about his phone call to extort Ukraine, for example?

7

Thanks to all for clarifying what I was trying to say, and doing it far better than I did. It was late when I made the post.

My goal was to make people aware of this serious threat to the government many in this country take for granted.

It it one of Trump’s top goals to put it back in place should he ever regain the presidency. And I suspect DeSantis is taking notes.

@wolfpup, thank you for sharing information about the House amendment. It’s good to know others are worried about this.

For those who doubt its importance, cast your minds back to Kim Davis, former county clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, who took it upon herself to break her oath and unilaterally deny marriage licenses to gay couples, ignoring the protections created by Obergefell. Think about having a government populated with people like that. The rule of law becomes nothing.

Kim Davis was small potatoes when you consider the potential effects of having loyalists planted in agencies such as NSA, State Department, FBI, DOJ, EPA, FDA, Department of Energy and so on. Trump did a lot of damage to all these and more in his first term, but he barely scratched the surface of what he, or someone like him, could do with Schedule F in a second term.

I’d say it might be a damn good time for Americans to get in touch with their representatives and let them know how they feel about preventing passage of any incarnation of Trump’s Schedule F. The backbone of democracy depends upon it.

Thanks again to all who joined the discussion.

8

What’s especially disappointing is how much this evokes the “spoils system” that flourished in American government in the 1800s. Giving political appointments to cronies, instead of filling jobs on merit, led to (predictable) graft and corruption, and required serious reforms to address. It’s even responsible, in part, for President Garfield’s assassination. Much like the Gilded Age, why does it seem like America is determined to relive its earlier troubles?

9

Unfortunately, my congressman was heavily involved in Trump’s plan to overthrow democracy and would gleefully support Schedule F if given the chance. Unfortunately, he will be easily re-elected in November.

However, thanks to all for the heads-up on this issue, of which I was only vaguely aware. I intend to keep it on my watch list from now on. My state has a good shot at electing a Democratic senator in the fall, which would give us two.

10

I presume the woman who refused to release funds for Biden’s team to start transition would fall under this description too?*

If so, in that case he didn’t even need the Executive Order, just a sycophant willing to do whatever suits him despite things like laws and tradition and fairness and justice impartiality. Makes me squirm to think it could happen in real life on a wide scale in all agencies. Without doubt fifty-thousand would just be the first step; once those key individuals are replaced a new Executive Order could presumably make ALL civil service jobs fall under Schedule F.

I am routinely amazed by how much the Republican Party is resembling the former Soviet Union they so hated two and three score of years ago.

*She was the first person I thought of after reading the first paragraph of the OP after the link and quote. The unintended consequences of a whole government full of people like her would be beyond frightening. Rather than creating superpowers for one specific ideology, it would almost have to eventually lead to the end of government functioning at all. The entirety of all Executive Branch functions would resemble Jared’s desk-- nothing would ever get done and anarchy would have to result.

11

I work for county government. Thirty years now. There are about 500 employed by the county. Many of us working from home now (COVID took care of that). We really pride ourselves on quick responses to public requests. It’s kind of fun. A lot of people are stunned that the government got back to them at all, and thank them. A co-worker just got a response Friday saying “Thank you, I love you”.

We all have or are ‘bosses’ but our real bosses are the people we work for. The people of the county. In my 30 years, I have not seen one action of grift or other inappropriate action. We don’t take an oath, and IMHO they are meaningless to many anyway.

If I had a point, it would be that if the boss is crook and cheat, well, they are going to hire crooks and cheats. Schedule F looks like a good way to install your own mooks in position of power. This pisses me off to no end.

12

I’m sure he’d love to try that, and if it does, I’m sure it will blow up in his face. I can’t imagine anything more likely to cause a massive strike by civil servants. And there’s a lot more jobs in the civil service in which the workers can’t be easily replaced than a lot of people realize.

I work for the Canadian federal government, and we have an in-house, 2 year on the job training program for my job, because there’s essentially no where else to learn this job. And I know that the US has an office exactly like mine, but with about 10 times the number of employees. And people with money would notice if my US counterparts suddenly stopped doing their jobs.

13

So true. My co-workers and I are trying to figure out how to ‘on-board’ a new employee in our part of the department. There are only 3 of us. But combined we have 55 years here. That’s a shit load of knowledge. It has to be done with an overview, and then specifics/tasks of the job that will take time to grow into. Step by step, but don’t overload them with information and acronyms that we all take for granted.

My wifes previous boss said it great. It was asked of her that -

“If we train them to get higher certifications, they will leave for better pastures”

Her answer was perfect -

“What if we don’t train them and they stay”.

14

Thank you for extrapolating that out in a real life situation.
This morning I awoke with the thought of— What if government was made of Jeffery Clark types? If the military officer corps was made of the likes of Flynn? A worse dystopian future cannot be imagined!!

15

That’s great. You’re lucky. That’s not how it works in Chicago or Illinois in general.

Here, aldermen, county officials, state legislators, Congressmen, and Governors have all gone to jail, on a fairly regular basis.

16

Well, to be fair, sometimes it is because the Governor’s haircut was deemed to be a crime against humanity, right? Or was it the corruption thing, I am having a hard time recalling the details?

17

It’s a funny thing about oaths. I was required to administer hundreds of them over my career. There were oaths for witnesses, prospective jurors, sworn jurors, non-certified interpreters… I don’t even remember them all now.

I always tried to imbue an element of weightiness to oaths as I administered them. You could always pick out the folks who were just going through the motions and the ones who got a little wide-eyed over taking their responsibilities seriously. The difference in solemnity between a prospective juror and a sworn juror was noticeable. In general, I think people take their oaths quite seriously.

The goal of hiring civil servants should always be to find the people who regard taking an oath as important, impartial business. Sounds like your shop has kept that goal at the forefront of their hiring practices. Oaths aren’t necessary to ensure an employee will do their job faithfully and well. But knowing that the person you hired would take such an oath seriously is what to shoot for.

In my time as a civil servant, I saw political shenanigans at the judicial level with respect to strategic appointments by governors and elevations to appeals courts and what not. This is nothing new. But never within the bench itself. Like your office, the courts I worked for understood their roles. Impartiality, integrity and ethical behavior were the utmost goals of their efforts.

Thank goodness, and we must ensure it always remains so.

It’s true that someone like Trump can install toadies with or without Schedule F. But with Schedule F, he removes all threat of civil service legal response to hold him accountable. Civil service is what provides that protection.

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Some of us tried to wave the flag on this as it was happening, but the insanity preceding and after the election pretty much pushed this story out of the media. I agree that this is one of the primary threats of a second term Trump, or really any Trumpist Republican winning the White House.

19

I remember you did. I was watching it, too, and agree it fell from view due to the tidal wave of competing egregious unlawful behavior on the part of All Things Trump.

After Biden revoked Trump’s EO, I thought it was taken care of. The Axios story caught me by surprise.

I hope people will keep in mind how important this is when making their voting choices.

20

Thinking back, we did see an elected officer allow his son to use his county vehicle once. Not much of a sandal really. I might be able to come up with more.

The worst thing we saw was the same elected officer throw out years of everyone’s reviews. Lots of personal information there. He did not shred it. People where pissed. Real pissed. Every one asked to be given ‘Life Lock’ or a similar service. It was not granted.

It’s one of a few reasons my Wife and others quit.