Column: Trump wants to turn the government into an “army of sycophants”

If former President Trump wins the election in November, he says he will implement, among other things, a radical plan to force the federal bureaucracy to bow to his demands on “day one,” immediately after he begins deporting millions of illegal immigrants.

Like any president, Trump would undoubtedly staff the top levels of government with loyal officials. But he also intends to get his way by allowing lower-ranking federal employees to be fired for their political views.

“We will pass critical reforms that will allow any executive branch employee to be fired by the president,” Trump said at the start of his campaign. “The deep state must and will be brought to justice.”

The effects would be far-reaching.

If Trump prevails, Justice Department prosecutors would immediately launch criminal investigations into President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Obama and others who have incurred Trump's ire.

Newly appointed IRS officials would likely be tasked with auditing the tax returns of prominent Democrats, a measure Trump called for during his first term.

Trump's newest political ally, anti-vaccine campaigner Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said last week that the candidate had asked him to oversee changes at the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and other public health agencies.

At the Pentagon, Trump has announced plans to fire high-ranking military officers he considers “woke.” And he has vowed to purge the CIA and FBI, accusing both agencies of “persecuting” conservatives and Christians and of investigating his 2016 presidential campaign.

These shocking scenarios are not the product of the imagination of Trump's critics. Trump himself proposed them.

Underlying most of them is his promise to eliminate civil service protections, a sweeping idea that has escaped public scrutiny because it is so shaky.

Trump said last year he wanted the power to fire anyone he deemed a “renegade bureaucrat” at will. “I will use that power very aggressively,” he added.

Cabinet members, agency heads and other political officials are appointed to their positions by the president and can already be dismissed at will.

But civil servants – officially nonpartisan officials who work under presidents of both parties – can only be fired for good cause, and they can appeal the firing to an independent review board.

Of the federal government's roughly 2.1 million civilian employees, only about 4,000 are presidential appointees. Most of the rest are civil servants, including FBI agents, NIH scientists, national park rangers and IRS calculators – all of whom would be affected by Trump's proposed changes.

“An army of slimes”

Federal government experts believe Trump's proposal, known as “Schedule F” because of the expansion of the occupational category it proposes, is a bad idea.

“It would turn large parts of the civil service into an army of sycophants,” says Robert Shea, a self-described conservative Republican who was a senior official in the White House Office of Management and Budget under President George W. Bush.

Shea said he found the unfettered advice of officials useful when he was appointed by the president. “They told me when what I wanted to do was stupid. They advised me whether it was legal or not,” he said. “But they also did everything they could to help me find better ways to accomplish what we wanted to accomplish.”

The changes proposed by Trump, Shea said, “would mean that if you told your boss that what he or she was proposing was illegal, impractical [or] If you are unwise, you could be branded as disloyal and fired.”

Donald F. Kettl, professor emeritus of public administration at the University of Maryland, noted that if a new Trump administration laid off just a few employees in each agency, the rest would quickly get the message.

“Change can be achieved through intimidation,” he said.

The ability to fire civil servants at any time sounds like a way to make the bureaucracy more efficient. In practice, however, this would pave the way for more politically motivated decisions and abuse of power.

An IRS to check enemies

“The IRS is a perfect example,” Shea said. “If a political official asked someone to initiate an audit for no apparent reason, an official could resist it. But if Schedule F were in effect, the official could be fired.”

Retired Marine General John F. Kelly, who served as Trump's White House chief of staff in 2017 and 2018, said after Trump left office that the then-president had asked the IRS to investigate several of his perceived enemies, including former FBI Director James B. Comey and his deputy Andrew G. McCabe.

The IRS, then headed by a Trump appointee, launched audits of both men's tax returns after Kelly left the White House. A subsequent Treasury Department investigation found no evidence that the audits were in response to Trump's order.

Kelly told the New York Times in 2022 that Trump also wanted the IRS and Justice Department to investigate former Secretary of State (and 2016 election rival) Hillary Clinton, former CIA director John O. Brennan, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and other people he viewed as enemies.

“In a second term, there would be no buffer of principled appointments to stop him,” said Donald Moynihan, a professor at the University of Michigan.

Kettl pointed out that Project 2025, a policy blueprint largely drafted by former Trump aides, proposes that the deputy IRS commissioner in charge of enforcement, who is currently an official, be appointed by the president. Trump claims he knew nothing about the report, although its lead author says he briefed the former president on its contents.

An anti-vaccination agenda at the FDA?

Even specialized agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration are under pressure from List F, Kettl warned.

What happens to the scientists and policymakers at the FDA and other health agencies when Trump installs Kennedy and the anti-vaxxer pushes through his lifelong agenda?

“Anyone who violates the guidelines or whose conduct is inconsistent with RFK, [Jr.]The FDA's policy positions could be replaced. That would certainly apply to the FDA's role in approving vaccines,” Kettl said. “The potential for massive change is enormous. Will I be able to get a flu shot?”

Kennedy has said he would like to shift the focus of the NIH, the world's largest public funder of medical research, to his favorite causes, chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes. “We're going to give infectious diseases a break for about eight years,” he said last year.

Ministry of Justice

Justice Department prosecutors have long valued a high degree of independence from political pressure, but Trump has said he wants to “completely clean up” the department and remove anyone from the department who was involved in investigations into his past conduct.

“Since the Nixon administration, the Department has been committed to pursuing justice in a fair and impartial manner, without political interference,” said Donald B. Ayer, who was the department's second-highest-ranking official under President George HW Bush. “But that commitment is a norm, not a law.”

“If there is a bad actor who wants to break the rules, he can break the rules,” he said.

Stripping career lawyers of civil service protections “could chill their willingness to give honest legal advice,” he added. If those lawyers resign or are fired, there may be no one left to oppose Trump's campaign of legal retaliation. “Who's going to stop him?” Ayer asked.

During Trump's previous term, several of his top advisers believed it was their duty to rein in the president when he proposed actions they considered illegal or unwise, such as Trump's calls for the IRS to investigate his enemies, his suggestion that military personnel should shoot unarmed protesters, or his repeated calls for the United States to withdraw from NATO.

Trump later referred to these advisers as “RINOs,” or Republicans in name only, and promised to appoint true loyalists in his second term. There will be no moderating influences this time.

Combine that with Trump's plans to eliminate civil service protections and make internal dissent grounds for termination, and you have a recipe for total one-man rule.