In a video message released Thursday evening, Hegseth also lashed out at critics and the media for misrepresenting the pending moves as cuts to the military. He said President Donald Trump is committed to increasing resources for the armed forces, following through on campaign promises to boost defense spending.

“Beginning right away, we are pulling around 8%, or $50 billion, from [former President Joe Biden’s] budget plans,” he said. “We will move away from woke, non-lethal programs and instead spend that money on President [Donald] Trump’s priorities for our national budget.

“We’re asking the services to plan. It’s not a cut. It’s refocusing and reinvesting existing funds into building a force that protects you, the American people.”

On Wednesday, acting Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Salesses released a statement acknowledging that military agency leaders had been ordered to cut 8% from their initial fiscal 2026 Defense Department budget plans. That budget outline had been expected to top $850 billion.

The news drew significant concern from lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who were also informed that the moves could include an annual 8% cut for the next five years.

But Hegseth in his video said that any savings would be reinvested into other areas of the defense budget. He also said numerous security priorities — such as southwest border activities, nuclear modernization efforts, Virginia-class submarine procurement, cybersecurity efforts and core readiness training — would not face any budget reductions.

“This is great news for taxpayers and for our national security,” he said.

Hegseth did acknowledge that the department is working closely with officials from the controversial Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which has spearheaded efforts to dramatically slash staffing at a number of federal agencies.

The defense secretary indicated that civilian worker staff cuts will come to his department soon, but said he believes the work will make military operations more efficient without compromising readiness.

“Bottom line, it is simply not in the public interest to retain individuals whose contributions are not mission critical, and to restore accountability within the federal workforce,” he said. “Taxpayers deserve to have us take a really thorough look at our workforce top to bottom, and to see where we can find and eliminate redundancy.”

Hegseth said officials would start with “poor performers amongst our probationary employees,” although dismissal efforts at other federal agencies have largely focused on job seniority and not worker performance.

He also promised that military leaders will “hire and reward hard-working employees who are central to the core fighting mission.”

Hegseth did not take any direct questions from reporters after the video’s release. He also did not address rumors of plans to fire top military officials viewed by Trump administration officials as too closely connected to the last president.

Lawmakers lashed out at Lawrence, in line to be the second-highest ranking official at VA, for his lack of insight and outrage over the recent dismissal of more than 1,000 department workers as part of government-wide efforts to trim the federal workforce.

VA officials have insisted that the moves won’t hurt veterans’ benefits or medical care options. But Democratic lawmakers on the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee called the firings arbitrary and reckless, and questioned whether White House officials considered the long-term impact of those moves.

“They’re just making stuff up, telling the public things that then later turn out not to be true,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H. “They’re not thinking through how their actions will actually affect veterans. And I’m concerned that this reckless pattern of decision-making will continue.”

Lawrence, who served as VA’s under secretary for benefits during President Donald Trump’s first term in office, deflected most of those complaints, saying that he has not been involved in the personnel decisions ahead of his likely confirmation.

He promised to work closely with lawmakers to clarify how future personnel moves will and will not affect department operations, and expressed confidence that VA leaders are making moves to improve efficiency at the agency.

Lawrence’s job would effectively make him chief operating officer for the department, handling a variety of issues, including the ongoing electronic health records overhaul.

In December, VA officials said they hoped to restart that embattled effort in mid-2026. Lawrence said he hopes to move quicker on the issue.

“We can’t spend months again studying what’s going on and figuring it out,” he said. “Everything’s on the table. The goal is to come up with a plan that can be implemented … and to implement that plan.”

He also promised to continue implementation of the PACT Act — a 2022 law dramatically expanding veterans benefits eligibility for military toxic exposure injuries — and work for ways to offer more medical care options to veterans.

And he dismissed accusations that administration officials are working to massively shift veterans funding from federal medical centers to private-sector clinics.

“We are not going to privatize VA,” he said. “We would push back on any efforts to do that.”

Lawrence said he would ensure that outside officials — including members of the Department of Government Efficiency — do not access veterans’ benefits or health care information.

“Access to veterans’ benefits and health information is strictly guarded,” he said. “There is a restrictive process to do that.”

Lawrence is expected to be easily approved by the Republican-controlled Senate in coming weeks. If that happens, the vote will put confirmed officials in the department’s top two leadership posts as the White House tries to put in place further reform efforts at VA.

In a statement, VA Secretary Doug Collins said the elimination of the posts will save roughly $98 million annually, funds that can be redirected into veterans’ care and benefits.

“We thank these employees for their service to VA,” he said. “This was a tough decision, but ultimately it’s the right call to better support the veterans, families, caregivers and survivors the department exists to serve.

“To be perfectly clear: These moves will not negatively impact VA health care, benefits or beneficiaries. In the coming weeks and months, VA will be announcing plans to put these resources to work helping veterans, their families, caregivers and survivors.”

Roughly 479,000 employees work in department health care, benefits processing, memorial services and program support jobs. Of that total, about 43,000 are still in their probationary period, having served less than two years.

VA officials said the vast majority of the probationary group were exempt from dismissal because they hold “mission-critical positions” or are part of a federal workers union.

According to sources within the department, at least one probationary employee at the Veterans Crisis Line was let go as part of the dismissals. VA officials said supervisors were allowed to request exemptions for staffers identified for firing, but were given only a short period of time to make those counterarguments.

The moves came just hours after the White House closed its buyout offer for tens of thousands of federal employees, offering them eight months severance pay in exchange for resignations. About 75,000 individuals accepted that offer, well short of the 200,000 administration officials had hoped would consider it.

It also came just hours after Democratic lawmakers and union officials rallied outside the department’s Washington, D.C., headquarters to protest potential staff and funding cuts. On Thursday night, the dismissals drew swift condemnation from those same groups.

“It is reprehensible to target recently hired federal employees — particularly those who have chosen to serve veterans — solely because they have less due process rights and employment protections than other employees,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn, and ranking member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

“Make no mistake — Trump is looking to fire probationary employees because it is easy, not because it is good for veterans or cost effective. In fact, it is a massive waste of taxpayer dollars to fire employees that the department just invested months into recruiting, vetting and training.”

Officials from the American Federation of Government Employees said the dismissals were not about improving efficiency but instead “are about gutting the federal government, silencing workers, and forcing agencies into submission to a radical agenda that prioritizes cronyism over competence.”

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers could be fired under the probationary employee purge in coming days, although Office of Personnel Management officials have not said how many individuals they hope to cull from federal payrolls.

But whether the executive order even applies to those posts remains unclear. Trump’s pick to lead VA told lawmakers Tuesday that he is still examining the new rule, but he’s optimistic it will not adversely impact veterans’ care.

“I think what we’re going to see is that no one on the veteran side is going to miss their health care provider because of this new hiring freeze,” VA secretary nominee Doug Collins told members of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee during his confirmation hearing. “The president is making a prudent step as he comes into office to make sure that we have a good handle on what we got.”

Just hours after his inauguration, Trump ordered “a freeze on the hiring of federal civilian employees, to be applied throughout the executive branch.” The action covered both existing vacant posts and any potential new federal jobs.

The order did include an exception for military personnel, as well as positions related to immigration enforcement and public safety. It also stated that “nothing in this memorandum shall adversely impact the provision of Social Security, Medicare or veterans’ benefits.”

Collins acknowledged in the confirmation hearing that exactly what that exception covers is not clear. Benefits processors appear unaffected by the freeze, but what – if any – medical posts are covered is undefined for now. He said sorting out the uncertainty will be among his first priorities if he is approved for the VA leadership post.

VA ended fiscal 2024 with about 454,000 staffers, about 417,000 of whom work in department medical centers and clinics. About 10% of the workforce leaves each year due to retirement, firings or other career opportunities.

That level of attrition means Veterans Health Administration officials need to hire upwards of 40,000 new workers annually to maintain operations at VA medical sites, a significant challenge given the hundreds of locations spread throughout the United States.

Before Trump returned to the White House, officials from former President Joe Biden’s administration had warned that VA would likely need a budget boost of several billion dollars in coming months to keep up hiring rates to maintain current service levels.

Mark Takano, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said Tuesday Trump’s hiring halt could make that challenge even worse.

“If VA freezes hiring as mandated in Trump’s executive order, veterans could face significant wait times for medical appointments and reductions in access to care and benefits,” Takano said in a statement. “The drafters of these orders clearly did not consider the downstream effects of a hiring freeze on the millions of veterans who rely on VA.”

Several Democrats on the Senate panel expressed similar concerns.

“There are also openings where the facility directors are saying, ‘We need more nurses, we need more doctors, we need more mental health care specialists,’” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., ranking member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee. “You can’t provide veterans health care without the skilled professionals to do it.”

Federal union representatives also attacked the move.

“Make no mistake – this action is not about making the federal government run more efficiently but rather is about sowing chaos and targeting a group of patriotic Americans that President Trump openly calls crooked and dishonest,” American Federation of Government Employees President Everett Kelley said in a statement.

As part of the order, Trump directed officials in his new administration to submit plans “to reduce the size of the federal government’s workforce through efficiency improvements and attrition” in the next 90 days. The memo states that the freeze will stay in place until at least then.

The pardon impacts veterans who were charged under a previous version of a law in the military’s Uniformed Code of Military Justice that criminalized sodomy, including between two consenting individuals.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court struck down anti-sodomy laws nationwide in a 2003 ruling, the 63-year-old regulation stayed on the books in the UCMJ until Congress amended the law in 2013 to remove consensual sexual acts.

“Some of these patriotic Americans were subject to court-martial, and have carried the burden of this great injustice for decades,” Biden said in a statement. “I am committed to maintaining the finest fighting force in the world. That means making sure that every member of our military is safe and respected — so they can focus on their mission.

“This is about dignity, decency, and ensuring the culture of our Armed Forces reflect the values that make us an exceptional nation.”

Veterans will be able to apply for the pardon if they fall under the eligibility criteria, a senior administration official said. If they are approved for the pardon, they can use the certificate of pardon provided to begin the process of fixing their discharge papers.

Another senior administration official said the Biden administration estimates that thousands of veterans were convicted of consensual conduct under military law, making them eligible for the pardon.

“We are going to take steps to try to make it as easy as possible for individuals to apply for [their paperwork to be correct],” the first senior administration official said. “When the Department of Justice sends the certificate of pardon to those who are eligible, they’ll be including material identifying specifically how they can apply for the change in their character discharge, along with the form for them to do so.”

Some veterans, however, have additional charges on their military record related to sexual identity — conduct unbecoming, for example — that fall outside the scope of the now-defunct portion of the anti-sodomy law. The second senior administration official said the proclamation from Biden does acknowledge that fact, but the pardon does not cover those with other charges tacked on due to their sexual orientation.

Those veterans with additional charges on their record would need to go through a separate process through the Justice Department, they added.

Biden’s pardon for LGBTQ+ veterans comes after the Pentagon in September 2023 announced a “proactive review” of LGBTQ+ veterans who received less-than-honorable discharges based on sexual orientation through the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

According to the Defense Department, more than 32,000 troops were separated from the military under its “homosexual conduct” policy between 1980 and 2011. Of those, roughly 14,000 LGBTQ+ troops were issued less-than-honorable discharges from the armed forces.

Despite the review, the Pentagon has faced its share of legal challenges from LGBTQ+ veterans.

Last Thursday, a district judge denied a motion by the Pentagon to dismiss a class action lawsuit from LGBTQ+ veterans over discharge papers unnecessarily identifying their sexual orientation as grounds for separation — and the responsibility for records’ correction being put on the veterans.

The judge in their decision noted LGBTQ+ veterans are “forced to bear the burden” to alter their discharge papers to protect their privacy and not immediately out their sexual orientation. The judge did not agree with the Pentagon’s argument that the review currently taking place within the Defense Department should be grounds to dismiss the case.

That means he knows — more or less — what he’s got, and what he needs. And what he needs, is people.

“[In the services], we’re not having a problem recruiting cyber talent,” he said at the 2024 TechNet Cyber conference presented by the Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association International in Baltimore. “Our retention is where we’re having a challenge.”

Gorak, the principal director for resources and analysis for the Pentagon’s Chief Information Officer, said DoD has 27,000 vacancies, down from 30,000 last year. The total cyber defense workforce is comprised of roughly 225,000 service members, civilians and contractors.

Gorak said there is interest in working for the government or serve in the military. The public sector has always been able to emphasize a unique mission and a stable career. While that has been — and is — a selling point, leaders said they also need to use authorities to pay competitively and offer training. Otherwise, government will lose workers to the private sector or other agencies who are also competing for this great need.

Messaging is a part of the problem, Gorak said, especially in the search for early career talent.

“I talk to students and I tell them, ‘You can join the Department of Defense as a civilian,’” Gorak said. “They look at me like I’m cross-eyed. [They say], ‘I had no idea that we have 900,000 civilians in the DoD.’”

There is some headway being made, with the department announcing on June 12 its new Cyber Academic Engagement Office, led by Gorak. The goal is to have a dedicated office for coordinating and funding academic engagement programs for the department.

The other aspect of solving the people problem is organizing all the different pay authorities, work roles, skill requirements and types of hires across the Defense Department.

Take, for example, the basic IT job in the government, called a “2210.” Gorak said there are 54,022 employees with this position description performing 72 different work roles, illustrating how one occupation can manifest into different work depending on the office.

That’s part of what makes classification difficult, especially as technology constantly evolves to require new skills or training. The DoD Cyber Framework originally had 54 distinct work rules; now it has 72.

So, recruiters need to understand the actual work being done in order to look for it in the job market, classify it correctly, and then compensate it competitively, Gorak said.

“If you’re a GS-12 and you’re an expert, you should get paid a lot more than a GS-12 who’s at a basic level,” he added. “Pay for performance. Pay for what your actual expertise is. That’s the system we have to get.”

DoD has a number of authorities available that allow it to pay recruitment and retention bonuses, set higher starting salaries and reward high achievers. The department has direct hire authority to circumvent the USAJobs application process. The DoD Cyber Excepted Service offers a market-based pay structure that can offer as much as a 40% salary increase, Gorak said.

So far, about 15,000 positions are eligible for CES, but only 9,000 of them have actually been converted. Gorak’s team has worked to make some improvements to encourage conversion, including allowing individuals to convert instead of requiring that of an entire organization and letting the services delegate that process in-house instead of relying on one office process all conversion packets.

The only combatant command that is fully eligible for CES is Cybercom. Army Cyber Command is the second biggest.

Still, part of the reason available flexibilities haven’t been used is they’re expensive. In other cases, HR personnel don’t know they exist or aren’t trained on how to use them. That’s also why time-to-hire even for positions that should be fast-tracked remains lengthy.

On the civilian side, hiring timelines hardly improved from 2022 to 2023, and 2210 IT workers remain among the slowest to onboard.

In the meantime, the department — alongside other civilian agencies — has recognized that young people can attain digital skills without a college degree. The government is coming around to that trend, but it’s still a new way of thinking for some.

“I contend to you that there are people out there today … working in their bedroom upstairs who are outstanding cyber professionals who can do this job, but because they don’t have the experience and they don’t have the degree and they don’t have whatever certs we think are hot right now, we don’t hire them,” he said. “I think that is a mistake by the federal government, and we have to get past it.”

Tom Jones and his American Accountability Foundation are digging into the backgrounds, social media posts and commentary of key high-ranking government employees, starting with the Department of Homeland Security. They are relying in part on tips from his network of conservative contacts, including even workers themselves. In a move that alarms some, they are preparing to publish the findings online.

With a $100,000 grant from the influential Heritage Foundation, the goal is to post 100 names of government workers to a website this summer to show a potential new administration who might be standing in the way of a second-term Trump agenda — and ripe for scrutiny, reclassifications, reassignments or firings.

“We need to understand who these people are and what they do,” said Jones, a former Capitol Hill aide to Republican senators.

The concept of compiling and publicizing a list of government employees shows the lengths that Trump’s allies are willing to go to ensure that nothing or no one will block his plans in a potential second term. Jones’ Project Sovereignty 2025 comes as Heritage’s own Project 2025 is laying the groundwork, with policies, proposals and personnel ready day one of a possible new White House.

The effort, which is focused on top career government officials who are not appointees within the political structure, has stunned democracy experts and shocked the civil service community in what they compare to the “red scare” of midcentury McCarthyism.

Jacqueline Simon, policy director at the American Federation of Government Employees, said the language being thrown around — the Heritage Foundation’s announcement praised the group for ferreting out “anti-American bad actors” — is “so shocking.”

Civil servants are often former military personnel and all are required to take an oath to the Constitution to work for the federal government, not a loyalty test to any one president in the White House, she and others said.

“It just seems as though their goal is to try to menace federal employees and sow fear,” said Simon, whose union is backing President Joe Biden for re-election.

As Trump, who has been convicted of felony charges in a hush-money case and is under a four-count federal indictment accusing him of working to overturn the 2020 election, faces a likely rematch with Biden this fall, far-right conservatives have vowed to take a wrecking ball to what they call the deep-state bureaucracy.

The Trump campaign has said repeatedly that outside groups do not speak for the former president who alone is setting his policy priorities.

Conservatives view the federal workforce as overstepping its role to become a power center that can drive or thwart a president’s agenda. Particularly during the Trump administration, government officials came under attack from both the White House and Republicans on Capitol Hill, as his own Cabinet often raised objections to some of the former president’s more singular or even unlawful proposals.

While Jones’ group won’t necessarily be recommending whether to fire or reassign any of the federal workers it lists, the work aligns with Heritage’s far-reaching Project 2025 blueprint for a conservative administration.

Heritage’s Project 2025 proposes reviving the Trump “Schedule F” policy that would try to reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers as political appointees, which could enable mass dismissals – although a new Biden administration rule seeks to make that more difficult. The Heritage project is working to recruit and train a new generation to come to Washington to fill government jobs.

In announcing the $100,000 “Innovation Award” last month, Heritage said it would support American Accountability Foundation’s “investigative researchers, in-depth reports, and educational efforts to alert Congress, a conservative administration, and the American people to the presence of anti-American bad actors burrowed into the administrative state and ensure appropriate action is taken.”

Heritage President Kevin Roberts said in a statement the “weaponization of the federal government” has been possible only because of the “deep state of entrenched Leftist bureaucrats.” He said he was proud to support the work of American Accountability Foundation workers “in their fight to hold our government accountable and drain it of bad actors.”

The federal government employs about 2.2 million people. That includes those in the Washington, D,C, area but also workers who the unions say many Americans know as friends or neighbors in communities across the country.

About 4,000 positions in the government are considered political appointees who routinely change from one presidential administration to the next, but most are career professionals — from landscapers at Veterans Administration cemeteries to economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The public list-making conjures for some the era of Joseph McCarthy, the former senator who conducted grueling hearings into suspected communist sympathizers during the Cold War. They were orchestrated by a top staffer, Roy Cohn, who went on to become a confidant of a younger Trump.

‘Alarming trend’

Skye Perryman, CEO of the advocacy group Democracy Forward, said it’s all deeply disturbing, and reminiscent of “the darker parts of American history.”

“This is part of the overall, highly concerning and alarming trend,” she said.

Publicly naming government workers is an “intimidation tactic to try to chill the work of these civil servants,” she said, and part of a broader “retribution agenda” under way this election.

“They’re seeking to undermine our democracy, they’re seeking to undermine the way that our government works for people,” she said.

Jones, from his desk overlooking rickhouses storing barrels in the “Bourbon Capitol” of Bardstown, scoffed at comparisons to McCarthyism as “nonsense.”

He’s a former staffer to former Sen. Jim DeMint, the South Carolina conservative Republican who went on to lead Heritage and now helms the Conservative Policy Institute, where American Accountability Foundation has a mailing address. Jones also worked for Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, and provided opposition research for Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential bid.

With six researchers, Jones’ team is operating remotely across the country, poring over the information about federal workers within Homeland Security, State Department and other agencies that deal with immigration and border issues.

Their focus is on the highest ranks of the civil servants — so-called GS-13, GS-14, and GS-15 employees and those in senior executive positions who could put up roadblocks to Trump’s plans for tighter borders and more deportations.

“I think it’s important to the next administration to understand who those people are,” he said.

He dismissed the risks that could be involved in publicly posting the names, salary information and other details of federal workers who have some level of privacy, or the idea that his group’s work could be putting employees’ livelihoods in jeopardy.

“You don’t get to make policy and then say, ‘Hey don’t scrutinize me,”’ he said.

“Gut check’

He acknowledges some of the work is often a “gut check” or “instinct” about which federal employees would be suspected of trying to block a conservative agenda.

“We’re looking at, ‘Are there wrong people on the bus right now that are, you know, openly hostile to efforts to secure the southern border?”’

His own group came under scrutiny as it first probed Biden nominees.

Biden had repealed Trump’s Schedule F executive order in January 2021, but a Government Accountability Office report in 2022 found that agencies believed it could be reinstated by a future administration.

Since then, the Biden administration issued a new rule that would make it harder to fire workers. A new administration could direct the Office of Personnel Management to undo the new regulation, but the process would take time and be open to legal challenges.

It’s not every day that John Oliver, an Emmy-award winning comedian and host of “Last Week Tonight,” knows it, too.

On June 16, the British-American TV show host parachuted into federal HR territory and discussed how a second term under former President Donald Trump would upend the U.S. government workforce and rewrite traditional rules about how civil servants are hired and fired.

“A group of conservatives has come up with a plan of action to ensure that [Trump] can hit the ground running, and even if he does meet resistance from Congress or the courts, he will now have ways to go around them,” Oliver said on the satirical news show, which garners millions of views per episode and has nearly 10 million YouTube subscribers.

“I don’t want scientific research about nuclear power being done by people without experience,” he joked. “I don’t want my latte being made by someone without experience.”

Though he’s known for his cynical, often crass ridicule of pop culture, social issues and politics, Oliver has been credited with inciting actual political change. In a 2021 hearing of the House Transportation and Infrastructure on public water quality, witnesses and lawmakers referenced his televised exposé on harmful synthetic chemicals. In 2015, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton of Washington, D.C., said she was planning on showing lawmakers a clip of the show to educate staff and members on the district’s statehood bill.

On his June 16 show, Oliver took apart the plan known as Project 2025, a blueprint for a Republican candidate’s transition to the White House that is led by the Heritage Foundation, 100 conservative organizations and former government executives who claim it’s “not enough for conservatives to win elections.”

Trump and his supporters developed a plan to deal with that, known as Schedule F, which would have converted tens of thousands of civil servants into a specialty employment class that lacks job protections and makes them fireable, and hirable, at will. President Joe Biden swiftly undid Schedule F via executive order in 2021.

Schedule F “should be reinstated, but [senior executive service] responsibility should come first,” the playbook reads.

Part of the group’s 920-page “Mandate for Leadership” identifies certain federal agencies for elimination, privatization or consolidation, including the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, International Trade Administration, the Export–Import Bank, Economic Development Administration, Bureau of Economic Analysis and Census Bureau, Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

It calls the FBI a “bloated, arrogant, increasingly lawless organization, especially at the top,“ and derides the Department of Education as “a convenient one-stop shop for the woke education cartel.” The plan also alleges a “incestuous relationship” between the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control & Preventions and vaccine makers.

The group’s chief concern is that unelected civil servants, of which there are roughly 2 million, are liable to sabotage administrative policies they don’t agree with — acting as a sort of ungovernable, unaccountable influence.

“Byzantine personnel rules provide the bureaucrats with their chief means of self-protection,” the handbook continues. “What’s more, knowledge of such rules is used to thwart the President’s appointees and agenda.”

The system into which they are hired, however, is a meritocracy, meaning there are legal statutes and guardrails surrounding how their appointments are justified, how much they can be paid, and how they must remain nonpartisan. For political appointees, especially, there are rules on ethics and divestitures.

Unlike the legislative branch, the federal workforce is dispersed around the world and tends to retain its members from one election to the next to create a stable resource of knowledge. Some of these positions deal with policy, but many mirror the kind of work done in the private sector, like nursing, engineering or construction.

The current administration has anticipated this desire to reengineer the civil service, so in April, the Office of Personnel Management issued a regulation that guarantees employment protections unless a worker voluntarily waives them and sets up hurdles a future administration would have to clear before changing the rules.

Democrats in Congress have also tried to supplement the regulation with legislation. Those bills have yet to clear both chambers.

Nonetheless, the leaders behind Project 2025 have also created an application system for like-minded candidates to indicate their interest in serving a future Republican administration. The portal markets itself as a “Presidential Personnel Database” and asks questions about applicants’ political philosophy and assesses level of agreement to certain statements, including “the President should be able to advance his/her agenda through the bureaucracy without hindrance from unelected federal officials,” for example.

“Their goal here is clear: to assemble an army of vetted, train staff who can begin dismantling the administrative state from day one,” Oliver said.

Many good government groups, both nonpartisan and nonprofit, and federal unions have advised against Schedule F. A “Public Administration” journal article from last summer sampling empirical research concluded “converting civil servants to at-will status likely decreases government performance and increases corruption.”

Last month, OPM issued a memo to agencies reminding them that during an election year especially, departments must “ensure all personnel actions remain free of political influence or other improprieties and meet all relevant civil service laws, rules, and regulations.”

That includes pre-appointment review of any current politicos who wish to be slotted into a full-time career position.

Putting politics aside, Oliver said that these ideals of limited government are not new, even if they’re being acted on in a way that hasn’t been seen before.

“Project 2025 is born from an impulse almost as old as America,” he said. “It’s an impulse that says one class of Americans is entitled to lead, and the rest of us are lucky to be allowed to serve. These are old, old ideas that have been shouted from podiums … but have now been placed into a new handbook for only willing presidents to use on day one.”

A Partnership for Public Service poll sampling 800 U.S. adults this spring found just 23% trust the government, compared to 35% in 2022. The results show more Americans consider the federal government to be incompetent, and just 15% believe it to be transparent.

“The decline in the public’s trust of the federal government — our most important democratic institution — is alarming,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a non-partisan, nonprofit good government organization.

The federal government distinguishes itself, by its design and function, as a largely apolitical body of millions of workers who carry out policy set by the president or Congress. Federal workers are hired on the basis of their merits, though the upper echelons of cabinet agencies and departments are led by political appointees.

There are roughly 4,000 appointees serving besides their colleagues in the 2.2 million-large workforce. As early as the 1800s, workers have been legally shielded from cronyism and nepotism, though even the founding fathers recognized a need for government to resemble and serve its people, above all others.

Despite these measures intended to preserve a nonpartisan workforce, trust in government has been in decline since the 1960s. Experts worry deepening mistrust could impact voting and engagement, ultimately disincentivizing citizens to engage with and provide feedback to their government altogether.

This also comes at a time when federal agencies are trying to use modern technology to improve their relationship with constituents through more user-friendly websites, digital filing systems and in-person recruiting. That seems to have made an impact, given about half of respondents said they’re satisfied with their personal interactions with the government.

Still, concerted efforts made by agencies to hire young workers may be stunted by levels of mistrust particularly among those ages 18 to 34. The data shows trust fell from 30% to 15% since 2022.

The survey also supports findings that Republicans are even less likely to have confidence in their government.

Policy experts organizations that watch the government and even members of Congress have noted that attacks on the civil service have gained steam in conservative circles. Donald Trump attempted to reclassify thousands of career employees to at-will status, and his campaign supporters and potential vice presidential hopefuls have urged a similar process to take a renewed look at tranches of unelected “bureaucrats.”

Almost two-thirds said there are “many” civil servants that refuse to cooperate with policies they disagree with, with almost 79% of Republicans affirming that statement compared to 55% of Democrats. Fewer than a quarter said civil servants were nonpartisan.

Though Democrats tend to be more pro-government, a sense of efficacy even among members of this party have declined over the last two years.

“That progressive system has broken down in our time, and the only real solution is for the national government to do less: to decentralize and privatize as much as possible and then ensure that the remaining bureaucracy is managed effectively along the lines of the enduring principles set out in detail here,” wrote authors of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, a conservative playbook for the next administration’s leaders organized by the Heritage Foundation.

The Partnership warns that’s the opposite of what the public wants.

“Critically, the American people do not believe that further politicizing the civil service is a good way to improve our government’s ability to deal with national problems,” according to the findings.

For example, about 75% said they don’t believe a president should be able to fire a civil servant for “any reason,” and 90% said government loses on effectiveness when it’s motivated by politics.

Trust fell even when surveying across racial and ethnic groups, but especially for Hispanic or Latino respondents. This group saw trust in government among members fall to 23% from 45% two years ago.

In general, there were higher numbers of respondents who felt the government is wasteful, corrupt and inept than there are those who deemed it accountable, useful and attentive to public needs.