"They're Crooked People": Trump's Assault on the Federal Government (Conclusion)

In the first part of my story about the federal civil service, I went into the background: how the present system was started with the Pendleton Act in the 1880s, as a response to the chaotic and corrupt “spoils system” that had developed since the 1820s. Under that system, federal jobs at all levels, down to the smallest rural post office, were awarded for political loyalty. This meant that thousands of people were converging on the White House right after each presidential election, seeking actual meetings with the new president and his direct appointment! By 1881, the situation had gotten so bad that, on his first day in office, Pres. Garfield found a line of office-seekers stretching around the block! He found himself meeting with them personally for three hours each workday!

The new system, introduced in 1883 after a mentally ill office-seeker killed Garfield (!), aimed to create a merit system, in which applicants had to pass a competitive exam. Also federal workers were barred from “political assessments” (mandatory payments, in effect kickbacks, paid by each worker to the president and his party!). This system started small, but steadily grew, with little fanfare, for the next 80 years. By that time about 80% of the jobs were, and are, selected by merit, with the remainder being about 4,000 policy-making jobs which are directly filled by the president (with the topmost requiring Senate confirmation; a process which is beginning for the second Trump term right now).

Already, by the early 1960s, the federal government had become the nation’s largest employer (the numbers now fluctuate between 2.3-2.6 million). Though the population of Americans has increased by more than 100 million since then, and new agencies and departments have been created since, the overall size has stayed relatively stable. While salaries are generally quite far below those in private businesses, federal workers in return get much more job security (other than the political appointees), good benefits, and (hopefully) the satisfaction of benefiting the American people at large.

Then came Trump’s election in 2016.

The big difference in Trump’s case was that he was the first since Pres. Grant in 1868 who came into the job with no political experience at all (Eisenhower, the other famous general elected since, while never before 1952 going through an election, had had to manage beforehand two big and challenging multinational organizations- the Supreme Allied Command in World War II, and the NATO alliance afterward). The other recent presidents have come into the job from two primary directions: from the U.S. Senate (Obama, Biden) or from governing a state (George W. Bush, Clinton). George H.W. Bush was his predecessor’s vice president (like Biden), but had also been a congressman and director of the CIA.

Trump, instead, was used to managing a large multinational real estate business, one in which he could hire and fire with little interference, and could implement policies rapidly and on impulse. Now, as president, he was a true outsider. His encounters with the federal government had been, not in managing or overseeing (one of Congress’s roles) its workers, but in having his business regulated by it (in labor, finances, environmental impact, etc.).

There’s also pretty general agreement now that his election victory caught him by surprise. He had only the transition time (November-January) to start learning about the full implications of being president, including the details of his new massive workforce. This is a workforce that has a wide range of rights and protections, unlike anything in the business world. The result was that Trump was one of the slowest ever at filling the top jobs (followed by one of the highest turnover rates, too). I won’t go into detail about either for his first term; instead I refer you to this article (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/tracking-turnover-in-the-trump-administration/). Pretty stunning!

At the same time, Trump had campaigned with the usual Republican ideology that the nation should have a smaller federal government and less regulation. But, even before his election, he was the first candidate to face an FBI investigation (into whether there were ties between his campaign and the Russian government). Another incident that got under his skin happened right after the inauguration, when a National Park Service employee tweeted, quite legally, an unfavorable comparison between his crowd size that day and those for Obama. These developments certainly added to his general disgust with the government as he found it (expressed in his rhetoric about “draining the swamp,” and destroying the “deep state” which was out to get him!).

A golden opportunity to challenge the federal bureaucracy fell into Trump’s lap right at the beginning. An Obama-era “scandal” from 2014 had resulted when a Republican congressman charged the Veterans Administration with very long wait times for vet treatments; while the charge turned out to be greatly exaggerated, it resulted in the resignation of the Secretary of Veterans Affairs. So Trump had a basis for saying that one important agency wasn’t working well (not just that the civil service was targeting him personally).

His first step was to push through a law that made firing VA workers easier in June 2017; this resulted in thousands being fired (mostly low-level, but a few senior leaders- including Trump’s first choice for VA secretary!).

For this post, to keep a complex story intelligible, I will focus on just three parts of the federal bureaucracy which are directly involved in managing the vast civil service: the Office of Management and Budget (OMB); the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and the much smaller Presidential Personnel Office (PPO). All three usually get little media attention, but have real significance.

That’s especially true of the OMB. It’s designed to be the central implementer of the president’s policies. Congress decides the actual budget (a mere $6.8 trillion in 2024!), but the president these days submits his version as the blueprint beforehand, making clear where he wants the money spent. What the OMB does is the actual directing of who gets what and when, for the 14 subdivisions known as Cabinet “departments”, and for the host of smaller “agencies” (subject of course to laws and regulations). It also supervises the performance (how well the departments and agencies carry out their missions), and is the channel for communicating executive orders from the president.

The OPM is the management agency for the workforce itself. It deals with the variety of workforce unions, sets up and evaluates the exams for jobs, sets overall work rules, and provides a clear process for settling disputes within the workforce and for the protection of whistleblowers (individuals who make claims about major federal corruption and incompetence).

The PPO is the office, located literally within the White House, that manages the job process for those 4,000 or so top political appointees (about 1,600 of which go through Senate confirmation). It collects the references, sets up the FBI background and security checks, and advises the president on individuals’ qualifications and commitment to his policy goals. Of course one of the most embarrassing types of media stories that can happen for a president is to have any of his top nominees be forced to withdraw, especially in the very public context of Senate hearings! The PPO is supposed to be his insurance against any such humiliation.

Hopefully my explanations have clarified the importance of the 3 agencies mentioned. In broad terms, Trump set out to go after all 3 by the spring of 2017: by 1- establishing the OMB as an aggressive agency, using it to cut the workforce and enforce loyalty (starting with the VA); 2- eliminating the OMB by merging it with the GSA (the General Service Administration, the agency responsible for issuing contracts for government equipment); and 3- having the head of the PPO do aggressive loyalty tests for the political appointees. The point of the OPM merger was to weaken the worker unions and overall job protections (by getting rid of the appeals board where workers could contest being fired).

All of these plans were based on a memo by James Sherk (an important official- he will be the one to write Schedule F- of which more later!). Trump’s method was to issue 3 executive orders in May 2018. He immediately ran into difficulties in the second case; the first people he appointed to the OPM either didn’t agree with the merger or moved too slowly for his liking, and so there was frequent turnover (even by Trump standards!).

Trump didn’t get around to the PPO until Feb. 2020, near the end of his term. His choice for a new head was certainly one of the most outlandish of his presidency (which is saying a lot!). He chose John McEntee, just 29. McEntee had gotten his first public notice through a viral video when he was a college football player. He then was an enthusiastic campaign volunteer for Trump in 2016, making friends with Donald Trump, Jr. Next he became the president’s “body man”. No, this wasn’t that assistant who carries the nuclear launch codes in the so-called “football”; this job literally meant carrying golf equipment and other baggage, and collecting fast food orders. McEntee got in trouble with then-chief of staff John Kelly in 2019 for a gambling addiction, which caused him to be expelled from the White House. But Trump clearly liked the young man, so within 24 hours he appointed him to head the Presidential Personnel Office!

McEntee understood that he was there for just one reason- to purge political appointees just below Cabinet rank who were thought to be disloyal (and he knew he had to move quickly). His actions (not surprising, given his youth and lack of any relevant administrative experience!) can only be described as farcical. He hired only people close to his own age (some still in college!), and it was obvious to reporters that he was hiring the women for their looks. Then he and his assistants hauled official after official into long and harassing interviews. In the end, despite getting much media attention, he doesn’t seem to have caused any major changes before Trump left office in Jan. 2021!

In contrast to the general lack of success with the other two agencies, Trump (eventually) found a man, ideal in his ideology and ruthlessness, to carry out his wishes at the most important of the three, the OMB. His name is Russell Vought (pronounced “vote”).

Russell Vought- the past (and likely future) Trump Director of the Office of Management and Budget (from Wikipedia)

Now he may be just as unfamiliar to you, readers, as the man I revealed in my last post as the originator of the present civil service (Dorman Eaton!). But, I can assure you, Vought is a man to know- a man with a mission, a mission that could (I am not exaggerating) completely reshape the nature of the federal workforce. An article in the prestigious British magazine “The Economist” this month titles him “Trump’s Holy Warrior”. He is likely to become much more familiar in the new Trump term (especially when he comes up for confirmation to return as head of the OMB).

Vought was born in 1976; his parents were devout Christians (his dad an authoritarian ex-Marine). He went to Wheaton, an evangelical Christian college in Illinois (the one that produced famous preacher Billy Graham), and got into the federal government by a familiar route (working for a succession of congressmen, ending as the policy director for future Vice President Mike Pence, a fellow evangelical). In 2010, he revealed his distinctive ideology, and surprised all who knew him, by suddenly quitting his promising job- in order to ally himself with the so-called “Tea Party,” conservative Republicans angry at the top leaders of their own party (as well as with Obama’s election). He took a job with the activist lobbying branch of the Heritage Foundation, the Republican think tank that was also moving much further to the right (the future authors of “Project 2025”). Vought was active in the push to repeal the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), including backing a government shutdown to make it happen.

In 2017, Pence got him into the Trump Administration as the deputy head of the OMB. Now- about his ideology. Vought is a Christian nationalist. His views first became public when he defended the firing of a Wheaton professor who called both Christians and Moslems common “people of the book.” Vought referred to Moslems as having a “deficient theology” (which led to a fiery exchange with Bernie Sanders at his confirmation hearing), and has since said that everyone who doesn’t accept Jesus “stands condemned”. He seems to have been the one to give Trump the idea of withholding disaster aid to pressure a Democratic governor (in Vought’s case post-hurricane relief for Puerto Rico; we’re now seeing this pressure put on California). He is a strong advocate of “impoundment” (an idea which Nixon originated, that a president can refuse to spend money designated by Congress- an idea made illegal by a 1974 law). He used that idea to withhold aid from Ukraine. The aim is to enable the president to "claw back" funding from Congress's intentions, to redirect it for his own purposes! Likely to see bipartisan pushback.

As for the civil service, Vought says he wants to “put the bureaucrats in trauma”, in order to make clear his belief in the so-called “unitary theory”: that there is no such thing as “independent” federal agencies. He is enthusiastic about the idea of mass firings to install loyalists (“radical constitutionalists”). He also wants Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act when he returns (to shut down protests), and believes that immigrants should only be admitted if they have the “same Judeo-Christian worldview”. To directly quote Vought: “Properly understood, [OMB] is a President’s air-traffic control system with the ability and charge to ensure that all policy initiatives are flying in sync and with the authority to let planes take off and, at times, ground planes that are flying off course”. Here’s another good analogy: “Ben Olinsky, who advised Democratic former President Barack Obama on labor and workforce policy before joining the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress, where he works on issues related to the economy and governance, said that Vought’s vision for OMB is “to basically change the plumbing so they can do whatever they want without any meaningful checks and balances” during Trump’s second term. “I think that it’s important to really make sure [Americans] understand what the plans are for changing the plumbing,” Olinsky said.” (Becker)

By 2020, with the election looming and the pandemic raging, and having already faced one impeachment, Trump found his intentions about creating a more subservient civil service frustrated. The OPM-GSA merger failed, and his 3 executive orders were rejected by a federal judge (one Ketanji Brown-Jackson, whom Biden would appoint as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court!). Speaking of the Court, he did have the satisfaction by now of installing three more conservatives, creating the current supermajority. At this point, in Oct. 2020, he issued Schedule F.

Despite its bland name, it amounts to a revolution in the civil service. It would allow the reclassification of an estimated 50,000 jobs (those with significant power, just below the current top political appointees) from the protected merit status to being presidential appointees (subject to immediate firing!). The intent is to fill those slots with loyalists (right-wing organizations have been coming up with lists of possible replacements for the last 4 years!). At the time, Trump of course was not reelected the next month, and so it wasn’t actually implemented. Biden immediately reversed it. But Trump has vowed to bring it back immediately, with Vought as its immediate enforcer! He wrote the chapter about using Schedule F in the Heritage Foundation’s infamous “Project 2025” (May 2023). It will certainly face major court challenges. But, if it does go forward, we will begin to see a very different federal government- one much more like the old pre-1880s "spoils system". Vought is already building an alliance with the billionaire pair, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who call themselves “the Department of Government Efficiency”, which has the same goal of drastic cuts of federal jobs.

This strategy is what has been called in a recent book “ungoverning”: directly assaulting institutions based on expertise (seen as corrupted by leftist ideology), even if it means that they can’t function. The goal is a radical reshaping of the executive branch into a more authoritarian and ideologically driven model. Stripping away job security for federal workers is likely to drive thousands, with invaluable expertise, out of public service.

This has been the most “current events” topic I’ve yet tackled! This fight over the nature of the civil service is about to unfold in real time (indeed Vought just went through his confirmation hearing, and today Trump will be re-inaugurated). I will be pivoting away from current politics in the next post (there will already be plenty of it to deal with in the daily headlines!). I welcome questions, feedback, and ideas for new themes. That’s all for now!

Resources:

Becker, Amanda. “How Trump nominees could make Project 2025 a reality” (https://19thnews.org/2025/01/project-2025-russell-vought-office-management-budget/)

Bednar, Nick. “A Primer on the Civil Service and the Trump Administration,” Lawfare Dec. 3, 2024

(https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/a-primer-on-the-civil-service-and-the-trump-administration)

Beitsch, Rebecca. “Federal workers brace for Trump overhaul of civil service,” The Hill 11/18/24

(https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4993221-trump-federal-workforce-overhaul-schedule-f/)

Clark, Charles S. “Deconstructing the Deep State”

(https://www.govexec.com/feature/gov-exec-deconstructing-deep-state/) und. (likely 2017)

Hakim, Danny. “How a Conservative Christian College Got Mixed Up in the 2020 Election Plot,” NY Times Magazine Jan. 8, 2024. Hillsdale- alma mater of James Sherk & many Trump appointees.

Kellough, J. Edward. “The Fragility of Merit: Presidential Power and the Civil Service under Trump.” (2024) Best summary of present situation.

Krawzak, Paul M. and Peter Cohn. “The man with a plan to upend government, and what it entails,” Roll Call Dec. 2, 2024 (https://rollcall.com/2024/12/02/the-man-with-a-plan-to-upend-government-and-what-it-entails/)- Vought

n.a. “Russ Vought: Donald Trump’s holy warrior,” The Economist 1/2/2025 (https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/01/03/russ-vought-donald-trumps-holy-warrior)

PBS Newshour. “Russell Vought, a Project 2025 architect, likely in line for high- ranking post if Trump wins 2nd term.” (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/russell-vought-a-project-2025-architect-likely-in-line-for-high-ranking-post-if-trump-wins-2nd-term)

Redden, Molly, Andy Kroll, and Nick Surgey. ““Put Them in Trauma”: Inside a Key MAGA Leader’s Plans for a New Trump Agenda,” ProPublica Oct. 28, 2024 (https://www.propublica.org/article/video-donald-trump-russ-vought-center-renewing-america-maga)- includes important Vought videos.

Rohde, David. “In Deep: The FBI, the CIA, and the Truth about the Deep State.” (2020)

Ryssdal, Kai, and Sean McHenry. “How could the return of Trump-era “Schedule F” job appointments reshape the federal workforce?”

(https://www.marketplace.org/2024/10/31/schedule-f-political-appointees-federal-workforce-bls/)

Ward, Alexander, and Heidi Przybyla. “Trump allies prepare to infuse ‘Christian nationalism’ in second administration,” Politico 2/20/24 (https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/20/donald-trump-allies-christian-nationalism-00142086)

Wikipedia.org. “Russell Vought”, “Schedule F”