First Trump Term vs Second Term
Many priorities that will be pursued in President Trump’s second term do not require guesswork or critical analysis. He has already articulated a number that will impact the federal employee workforce. Some of these objectives would require Congressional action. Some cannot be overturned with a new executive order. Some could be implemented quickly through executive orders.
The agenda was highlighted in President Trump’s Plan to Dismantle the Deep State and Return Power to the American People. Here is a partial list.
- On Day One, re-issue 2020 executive order restoring the president’s authority to fire “rogue bureaucrats.”
- Overhaul federal departments and agencies, firing corrupt actors in our National Security and Intelligence apparatus.
- Fundamentally reform FISA courts.
- Establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to declassify and publish all documents on Deep State spying, censorship, and abuses of power.
- Establish an independent auditing system to monitor intelligence agencies.
- Move parts of the federal bureaucracy outside Washington.
- Ban federal employees from taking jobs at companies they deal with and regulate.
- Push for a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress.
What About Schedule F?
Numerous articles have been bemoaning what would happen with “Schedule F” in a second Trump term. Now that he has been elected, the discussions regarding Schedule F have more significance.
Earlier this year, OPM issued a new rule designed to thwart any future attempts to revive Schedule F. It is not a new law passed by Congress. It can be changed in subsequent administrations.
OPM, under new leadership, could issue a new rule canceling the prior one and implementing the intent of the previous Trump executive order. That cannot be done in one day, but it could be done fairly quickly. Reinstating Schedule F in the face of the OPM rule designed to prevent it would be a multistep process involving executive orders, regulatory changes through OPM, and probably a legal battle in court.
Other Executive Orders Issued by Trump and Canceled by Biden
President Trump issued several executive orders restricting federal employee unions and making it easier to fire federal employees. We can expect new orders on these issues much earlier in the second Trump administration than they were issued in his first term.
Here are some of the highlights that could be changed:
- Unions would be charged rent for federal office space and will not be reimbursed for travel expenses or for hours spent appealing worker firings.
- Federal employees would be ordered to spend 75 percent of their time doing the work for which they were hired as federal employees and not working on behalf of a union.
- Federal agencies would be required to publicly post union contracts online.
- Agencies would be encouraged to conclude negotiations with federal employee unions in less than a year.
- Official time is the system under which federal employees are paid salary and benefits to work on behalf of the union rather than perform other work. Federal employees would be severely restricted from spending more than 25 percent of their time on union or other non-agency business.
- Unions will be charged rent for using space in federal buildings.
- Prior to the Biden administration, OPM reported the federal government spent almost $175 million paying employees working on “official time” in 2016. The actual figure may be much higher than $175 million. Under President Biden, OPM no longer tracked or reported the amount spent by federal employees representing unions.
Making It Easier to Fire Federal Workers
- Under President Trump, executive orders addressed how long federal workers have to improve their performance after receiving a bad review. The time to improve was reduced from 120 days to 30 days.
- Agencies were encouraged to remove (fire) poor performers rather than suspending them.
What Drives the Desire to Change the Federal Civil Service System?
James Sherk was the Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy on the White House Domestic Policy Council under President Donald Trump. He was the Trump Administration’s top civil service reform and labor policy advisor from 2017 to 2021. After serving in this role, he authored an article on How Federal Bureaucrats Resisted President Trump.
Sherk provided a perspective on working with federal employees with observations like these:
[M]any career employees are faithful public servants. Almost every political appointee interviewed…recounted career employees who did their jobs diligently….Not a few liberal career employees would provide their perspective and concerns to conservative appointees, then faithfully implement policies political leadership decided on—even if they strongly disagreed. Those employees are a credit to the civil service. Public administration scholars’ vision of career employees setting aside their views to provide neutral expertise is not baseless….However, an antagonistic minority has caused significant problems. And in some agencies—like the Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights Division or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—the vast majority of career staff appeared hostile to Trump Administration policies. Career employees in those agencies treated political appointees not as the representatives of the will of the people but as an occupying army to be resisted.
Federal employees are employed to assist the chief executive in implementing policies. In this role, federal employees are presumably apolitical and are there to help the administration in power. The Hatch Act supports this philosophy. The purpose of the Hatch Act is to maintain a federal workforce free from partisan political influence or coercion.
Federal employees are entitled to their personal political views. The Hatch Act imposes restrictions on federal employees’ political activity. Every election season results in violations of the Hatch Act by a few federal employees.
Adding to the belief by some in a “Deep State” that operates as a fourth branch of government is the fact that political donations by federal employees are heavily in favor of supporting Democrats.
From having worked in the White House during the first Trump Administration, Sherk observed some federal employees would employ these methods to stymie the implementation of new policies:
- Withholding information;
- Refusing to implement policies;
- Intentionally delaying or slow-walking priorities;
- Deliberately underperforming;
- Leaking to Congress and the media; and
- Outright insubordination.
These observations from the person who worked with federal employees to implement changes in government were behind some of the Trump executive orders to make changes in how the federal government functions.
The listing of objectives Donald Trump outlined for his second term above indicate the underlying philosophy and rationale for the Trump executive orders has not changed and that these policies will be reinstated.
