Toward the end of his term as president, Donald Trump issued an executive order that sought to change the job status of tens of thousands of federal employees. That order created a new category of employees called “Schedule F”. According to the order, any federal employee who is involved, however tangentially, in policy-making decisions should be moved to that new category. Those who make the move lose their standard civil service protection against arbitrary termination, so Trump could fire them and replace them with people he knew to be his loyal followers. That executive order, issued in October of 2019 never went into effect because an election took place and Trump lost. Joe Biden won the presidency and his first presidential act was to nullify the Schedule F executive order. Now, candidate Trump has announced that he will reinstate that order if he becomes president again.
To understand the significance of Schedule F, one must have some understanding of the federal civil service. There are almost 3 million such workers at present. Most are career employees, with regular salaries, who enjoy collective bargaining rights and protection against arbitrary dismissal. They obtained employment by taking competitive examinations. When hired, they took an oath by which they pledged to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” and to “bear true faith and allegiance to the same…” They work within departments and take orders from civil service administrators, but in a real sense they work for the people of this country, and they bring to their tasks an enormous pool of knowledge, skills and experience. They are a non-political workforce and serve whoever happens to be the president at the time. But, as their oath commands, they are free — in fact, they are obligated — to express their honest evaluations of proposals brought before them.
It seems to me that the civil service — though not in any overt or official way — functions as a useful check upon the president’s influence. These workers can speak truth to power. I’d argue that their ability to impede the actualization of unwise policies is just the sort of guard against excessive presidential power that the Founders would have approved of.
But they are not the only government employees during a given administration. Every new president has the authority to hire temporary
workers of his or her choice. When Trump was newly elected, he had the right to fill 472 positions — largely high-level administrative posts — without anyone else’s approval. There were also 1,242 positions that he could fill with the Senate’s concurrence, and some 2,300 other positions most of which would be chosen by his own appointees, presumably after they had consulted with him.
Why did Trump find that his ability to appoint several thousand workers who were sympathetic to his political goals was insufficient? My guess is that his job experience played a role. He was the president of a private real estate firm that had been created by his father, and he was accustomed to having complete authority over his employees. Another factor was Trump’s personality. Trump suffers from personality disorders that make him highly ego-centric and narcissistic. He believes himself to be exceptionally intelligent, with unfailingly trustworthy instincts and irresistible charisma. Yet he needs constant reassurance from the people around him that he really has those attributes. He demands of his employees not just obedience, but loyalty. They must believe in him as a person and exhibit that devotion under all circumstances. No doubt many of the career civil service employees who would handle Trump’s initiatives wouldn’t perform that service.
And then there’s a third cause: it turns out that Trump wants to be an autocrat. While president, he was openly envious of the power of the dictators that he met with. And all of his delusions regarding his own superiority have led him to believe that he deserves to have that kind of power.
The Schedule F executive order was a step in that direction. For an autocrat, a government must speak with one voice: that of its ruler. Trump’s invention of the “deep state” theory rested upon that assumption. If, as he alleged, civil service employees were engaged in a conspiracy to undermine his presidency, his authority was not complete. No wonder he couldn’t complete that wall and failed to get Obamacare replaced and couldn’t get an infrastructure bill passed. He was hamstrung by internal enemies.
But cleansing the civil service of those enemies was only one step toward Trump’s goal of autocratic rule. Democracy must be attacked on several fronts. The power of a rival party has to be reduced to insignificance. That
party might be allowed to exist if the illusion that democracy mattered was thought to be useful, but elections must be completely controlled by the ruling power. Gerrymandering was a useful tool at the state level, but a total take-over by the autocrat had to happen eventually.
Another path on the way to autocracy is altering the rules of governance to increase the president’s authority and diminish the authority of other branches of government. Trump has already revealed his intention of making Congress less able to thwart the president’s proposals. Control of the judicial branch is crucial, and Trump has made distinct progress thereby creating a super-majority of conservative justices on the Supreme Court. They’ve boosted his authority over the justice department and proclaimed his immunity to indictment for illegal actions while engaged in “official” presidential actions. The armed forces, as well, must be obedient to the president. Trump has made it clear that he will use our army to control rebellious U.S. citizens.
Another step on the road to authoritarian rule is to create public doubt about the validity of democratic processes. Trump’s continuing insistence that the 2020 election was rigged has paved the way for Republicans to prepare an attack on the legitimacy of the coming election’s results. They intend to block the certification of state vote totals and seize the presidency in the resulting chaos.
Finally, in her recent book, Autocracy, Inc., Anne Applebaum tells us that the world’s autocratic leaders help each other stay in power. Trump recently boasted that he could arrange the release of Evan Gershkovich because Putin would free him “for me, but not for anyone else.” Biden got the job done; Trump now claims that he would have made a better deal.
(3) comments
Trump is a loser. Trump is a loser. Trump is a loser.
Says the loser.
A video of you howling at the moon when Trump wins would be utube gold.
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