hip Somodevilla/La Nacion/Zuma
In a campaign video from March 2023, Donald Trump laid out his goal to “dismantle the Deep State and reclaim our democracy from Washington Corruption.” Such rhetoric was common in 2016, too. But, this time, his incoming administration has an actionable plan for how to do it.
The idea has existed for years and, as Donald Trump prepares to take office, it will begin on day one: Make thousands of federal career civil servants “at will” employees and, in turn, fireable for not doing what the new administration demands. This will be the first step in a radical reshaping of the federal government.
Repeatedly, the newly elected president has made clear his second term will start with a purge. Once pre-vetted paper-pushers are in place, policies will be pushed through—with less internal resistance from longtime government employees.
To understand the next Trump administration, you have to know about Schedule F.
Signed in the lead-up to the 2020 election and promptly rescinded by the Biden administration, Schedule F would reassign potentially dozens of thousands of policy-related jobs under a new category, effectively stripping career civil servants from employment protections and making it easier for political appointees to fire them.
As I’ve reported before, one of the main champions of Schedule F during Trump’s first was Russ Vought, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget. In that role, the avowed Christian nationalist tried to turn the influential agency into a tool to pursue the president’s agenda without regard for institutional knowledge and expertise and, at times, in defiance of the law.
Vought and the rest of the [Heritage Foundation’s] Project 2025 administration-in-waiting plan to revive Schedule F—and take it beyond the budget office. Potentially, 50,000 federal workers could be affected, their expert roles open to partisan MAGA loyalists ideologically vetted to ensure little resistance to Trump’s project for an imperial presidency. “It’s going to be groundbreaking,” Vought told Heritage President Kevin Roberts on a podcast last year.
The Biden administration has since taken action to strengthen merit-based protections for career civil servants, but some experts and observers have noted the change could end up amounting to little more than a “speed bump” to delay the implementation of Schedule F and prevent the politicization of the workforce. Just last week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who could end up overseeing government health agencies under Trump, said as many as 600 National Institutes of Health workers should be fired and replaced.
Plus, Elon Musk seems is in on the act.
This week, President-elect Donald Trump kicked off the process of announcing his picks to staff the incoming administration, selecting a new “border czar,” critical national security roles, and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla) as attorney general. These were sometimes bizarre choices, but still part of a conventional transitional process: a president saying who would be put up to fill key positions.
In less usual fashion, Trump said “first buddy” Elon Musk and former presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy would lead the “Department of Government Efficiency”—a non-government advisory entity whose acronym, DOGE, hints at the Tesla billionaire’s favorite memecoin. The commission, pitched by Musk himself, will work alongside the OMB to restructure federal agencies and slash spending and regulations, until the summer of 2026.
“It will become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time,” Trump wrote in a statement. According to Musk, who previously advocated for a devastating $2 trillion budget-cut, the group “will send shockwaves through the system and anyone involved in government waste, which is a lot of people!”
Since the announcement, it has raised questions about possible funding sources and the extent of power DOGE can actually exert since federal spending requires congressional approval. But its stated goal of reshaping the executive branch in the image of the MAGA movement signals what is likely to come once Trump takes office: a full-blown war on the federal bureaucracy and career civil servants in Washington.
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