Civil servants: The coming Trump purge
President Trump is paving the way for mass firings of career civil servants if he wins a second term, said Laurie Garrett in CNN.com. Last week Trump signed an executive order fit for a “banana republic,” reclassifying more than100,000 federal employees involved in policymaking so that they can be fired without cause, like political appointees. That change, set to take effect on the eve of January’s presidential inauguration, would let Trump get rid of scientists, medical experts, foreign policy experts, and regulators of all kinds and pack the federal workforce with partisan sycophants and stooges. A leader of the largest federal worker union called it “a declaration of war,” and Ronald Sanders, a Trump-appointed head of a council on civil service, resigned in protest. This is just part of Trump’s second-term hit list, said Jonathan Swan and Alayna Treene in Axios.com. Sources who’ve spoken to Trump say he plans to fire FBI Director Christopher Wray, CIA Director Gina Haspel, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and all other agency and department heads who’ve resisted his demands.
Trump claims he just wants to “weed out underperformers,” said Bruce Lee in Forbes.com. But there’s a reason even the president can’t fire federal employees indiscriminately. Take Dr. Anthony Fauci, who’s served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, a tenure spanning three Republican and two Democratic administrations. Career public servants like Fauci carry specialized knowledge across presidencies. But Trump isn’t interested in evidence-based scientific, economic, or military advice. He wants to stock critical federal agencies “with ‘yes’ people.”
This order is “a dramatic escalation” of Trump’s authoritarianism, said Matt Ford in NewRepublic. com. He believes the federal government should operate like the Trump Organization, with every employee serving the boss’ whims and political interests. In Trump’s first term, said Bess Levin in VanityFair.com, he was “bedeviled” by rules barring him from axing federal employees who encouraged mask wearing during the pandemic, or highlighted the threat of climate change, or refused to back up his erroneous claim that a hurricane was headed for Alabama. Even if Trump loses the election, he might use his order to go on a firing spree and “cripple” a Joe Biden administration for months. That would be petty, destructive, and vengeful, but would anyone be surprised?