Trump Plans to Fire Civil Servants Involved in Policy If Reelected

This article in Government Executive caught my attention: “If Trump Is Reelected, His Aides Are Planning to Purge the Civil Service: Officials are looking to revive a controversial order issued in Trump's waning days and have already identified 50,000 federal positions to target.”

Trump wants to revive “Schedule F” and transfer civil servants into this new schedule which does not have the traditional civil servant protections. This was originally reported by Axios.

From the Government Executive article:

“The plan, as detailed to Axios and confirmed by Government Executive, would bring back Schedule F, a workforce initiative Trump pushed in the 11th hour of his term to politicize the federal bureaucracy. The former officials and current confidantes are, through a network of Trump-loyal think tanks and public policy organizations, creating lists of names to supplant existing civil servants. They have identified 50,000 current employees that could be dismissed under the new authority they seek to create, Axios reported and Government Executive confirmed, though they hope to only actually fire a fraction of that total and hope the resulting ‘chilling effect’ will cause the rest to fall in line.” 

From the Axios article:

“They [Trump allies] say Schedule F will finally end the “farce” of a nonpartisan civil service that they say has been filled with activist liberals who have been undermining GOP presidents for decades.

“Unions and Democrats would be expected to immediately fight a Schedule F order. But Trump’s advisers like their chances in a judicial system now dominated at its highest levels by conservatives.

“Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who chairs the subcommittee that oversees the federal civil service, is among a small group of lawmakers who never stopped worrying about Schedule F, even after Biden rescinded the order. Connolly has been so alarmed that he attached an amendment to this year’s defense bill to prevent a future president from resurrecting Schedule F. The House passed Connolly’s amendment but Republicans hope to block it in the Senate.”