I would think by their boss, whether the Secretary in question or by the President or someone else who thinks they have the authority.
You mean the one who wasn’t lawfully appointed and has no authority over them? They’ll just tell him no again.
Yep. We will be neck deep in “If the President does it/says it, it’s legal” territory by then.
And SCOTUS will find it is legal as part of the President’s official acts. Thus the Secretary has the authority to do it.
You are once again conflating “not subject to criminal penalty” with “possible”.
The presumption seems that there is no court that would rule for an immediate injunction until all of this were sorted out. I deny that antecedent.
All that matters in that scenario is the security guys. Who will they obey?
I’d be shocked if Trump’s new Secretaries don’t enter their new buildings within a phalanx of armed guys eager to escort out any worker the Secretary points at.
At least we wouldn’t have to wait long, we get the jack-booted thugs right away.
Absolutely. Full employment for jack-booted thugs!
You have a lot of faith in the courage of civil servants.
If they were asked to do something they consider illegal, they have to weigh the options of 1) obedience in advance, thinking that autocracy is a foregone conclusion, 2) disobey, knowing that they could in theory get in trouble later if what they did was blatantly horrible and sanity returns to the government, or 3) get informed that you have been fired and contest it, with the added reward of fighting for a just cause and your pay. None of these 3 are the obvious correct answer even for the fearful, except of course to leave if you are assaulted by armed security (nb, different from “battery” in that threatening someone with an immediate danger of physical violence is assault.)
Did you mean obey in #2?
Meanwhile, I suspect a lot will be going for #4) resign and take early retirement or find another job which I believe a lot of people will do. This will devastate organizations such as the CDC and NIH while could take decades to rebuild.
The New York Times ran an article that Elon Musk’s approach at Tesla, Twitter and elsewhere was to slash the budget severely and deal with the consequences later.
The tech mogul has been unabashed about slashing costs to the point that corporate processes — and sometimes even product safety — break down, philosophizing that he can just fix things later, the people said. And he has been unafraid to offend, stiffing vendors to negotiate better prices and sidestepping traditional suppliers to manufacture cheaper parts from scratch.
Suppose some guy you never heard of shows up at your job one day, claims he’s in charge despite there not being any paperwork to establish that he even works there, and starts telling you to do things that make no sense, and when you tell him to go away he says you’re fired.
Are you gonna believe him?
Suppose also that this guy has appeared on stage with the newly sworn in president. It won’t be just some guy off the street. People in government are paying very close attention to this. Wouldn’t you if your whole job category were at risk?
Then they’d know that this person hasn’t been confirmed by the Senate and has no authority to order anyone to do anything, least of all fire them.
They’ll know that that is a political question being fought in the courts, which have been very friendly with the new president. Who will be very angry with them, no matter how it plays out. If there ever is a new boss approved by the senate, all who stood against Trump will be stood against the wall. Maybe metaphorically? Maybe not?
Again, a lot of faith in their courage.
ETA: remember Col. Vindman?
These are bureaucrats we’re talking about. They do the job they’re assigned by the people in charge right now, not the people who might be in charge in a few months.
You want me to do something different? Sure. Let me get that in writing on a department letterhead signed off on by my supervisor, and I’ll handle it as long as it’s within my job description as agreed upon in our collective bargaining agreement.
My job isn’t a senior official in a government agency.
Let’s face it, the first line is the senior management in the agency. Director Goofy Scaristein is not going to walk into the building and start handing out pink slips, or walk up to the nearest peon and order them to go kill some kittens (or whatever). He’s going to go to senior leadership.
Lower level employees will take their cues from those bosses. Or decide they don’t want to work there anymore.
What if it is Kristi Noem?
I’ve got a somewhat high-level government position. In various circumstances, it can be not entirely clear who my “boss” is. I do work in a access-controlled site, with an armed guard and keycard entry, and whether working in the office or at home, I need access to my work computer/network.
So, if it works out that one day the head of my office (who does NOT have the power to hire/fire) tells me I’m fired, takes away my access keycard, has IT close my computer access, and instructs security to bar me from entry - have I been fired? What if my paychecks stop being deposited?
I am in a very toothless union, but there IS a contract with procedures for discipline/termination. But how will the NLRB (or other Agencies reviewing government labor dispute) react?
As you go up the management chain from my office to regional to national, there certainly have been countless instances of local management just following inexplicable directions from unclear sources on high.
I seriously doubt I will get fired - SOMEONE has to do the category of work I do. But previously under Trump here were rumblings of efforts to politicize my position and reduce civil service protections.
So, it is not INCONCEIVABLE that one day I’d find my computer access cut off, and my paychecks might cease. We’d see what the union could do in such situations, and how successful litigation might be. Heck, my very position was created by an Act of Congress. So a Congress doing Trump’s wishes could simply rewrite that Act.
Just saying, if the ostensible Numero Uno in any given national bureaucracy makes some edict, it is not an entirely certain matter how the top persons at each lower level would react.