{"id":26062,"date":"2023-08-29T11:47:30","date_gmt":"2023-08-29T11:47:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/uncategorized\/2023\/08\/29\/recruiting-starts-for-plan-to-shrink-government-fire-federal-workers\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T05:08:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T05:08:47","slug":"recruiting-starts-for-plan-to-shrink-government-fire-federal-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/management\/leadership\/2023\/08\/29\/recruiting-starts-for-plan-to-shrink-government-fire-federal-workers\/","title":{"rendered":"Recruiting starts for plan to shrink government, fire federal workers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With more than a year to go before the <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/election-2024\">2024 election<\/a>, a constellation of conservative organizations is preparing for <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/abortion-politics-new-hampshire-state-government-south-carolina-2022-midterm-elections-7624d58296aa9b808032e2edbcd166c3\">a possible second White House term<\/a> for Donald Trump, recruiting thousands of Americans to come to Washington on a mission to dismantle the federal government and replace it with a vision closer to his own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Led by the long-established Heritage Foundation think tank and fueled by former <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/donald-trump\">Trump<\/a> administration officials, the far-reaching effort is essentially a government-in-waiting for the former president\u2019s second term \u2014 or any candidate who aligns with their ideals and can defeat President <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/joe-biden\">Joe Biden<\/a> in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\t<aside class=\"smg-interstitial-link wp-block-smg-interstitial-link\">\n\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/federal-oversight\/2022\/08\/30\/congress-must-bar-trumps-schedule-f-washington-post-editorial-board\/\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__inner\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__media\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" src=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-184980454-Cropped.jpg.jpg?w=300\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__image wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" \/>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__content\">\n\t\t\t\t<span class=\"smg-interstitial-link__kicker\">Related<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<h3 class=\"smg-interstitial-link__title\">Congress must bar Trump\u2019s Schedule F: Washington Post editorial board<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"smg-interstitial-link__excerpt\">Former President Donald Trump created the Schedule F designation by executive order near the end of his term, just ahead of the 2020 election.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/aside>\n\t\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With a nearly 1,000-page \u201cProject 2025\u2033 handbook and an \u201carmy\u201d of Americans, the idea is to have the civic infrastructure in place on Day One to commandeer, reshape and do away with what Republicans deride as the \u201cdeep state\u201d bureaucracy, in part by firing as many as 50,000 federal workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe need to flood the zone with conservatives,\u201d said Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project and a former Trump administration official who speaks with historical flourish about the undertaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis is a clarion call to come to Washington,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople need to lay down their tools, and step aside from their professional life and say, \u2018This is my lifetime moment to serve.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The unprecedented effort is being orchestrated with dozens of right-flank organizations, many new to Washington, and represents a changed approach from conservatives, who traditionally have sought to limit the federal government by <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/debt-ceiling-biden-mccarthy-default-negotiations-cb0646c6301f1df97211896897df3723\">cutting federal taxes and slashing federal spending<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"531\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/fed-opm-headquarters-1jpg.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-60015\" srcset=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/fed-opm-headquarters-1jpg.jpg 800w, https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/fed-opm-headquarters-1jpg.jpg?resize=300,199 300w, https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/fed-opm-headquarters-1jpg.jpg?resize=768,510 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The Office of Personnel Management (employee entrance), 1900 E Street NW, Thursday, March 25, 2010, in Washington, D.C. (Sheila Vemmer\/staff)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Instead, Trump-era conservatives want to gut the \u201cadministrative state\u201d from within, by ousting federal employees they believe are standing in the way of the president\u2019s agenda and replacing them with like-minded officials more eager to fulfill a new executive\u2019s approach to governing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The goal is to avoid the pitfalls of Trump\u2019s first years in office, when the Republican president\u2019s team was ill-prepared, his <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/immigration-donald-trump-international-news-virginia-politics-682836eb8d5a4bf4b787eb0e0bfa11e8\">Cabinet nominees had trouble winning Senate confirmation<\/a> and policies were met with resistance \u2014 by lawmakers, government workers and even Trump\u2019s own appointees <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/donald-trump-entertainment-impeachments-national-security-united-states-f09c3802d9ae275697c52b56e54af756\">who refused to bend<\/a> or break protocol, or in some cases violate laws, to achieve his goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While many of the Project 2025 proposals are inspired by Trump, they are being echoed by <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/2024-presidential-candidates-who-is-running-e89fbfee94e7e7980594a9ce3994fec7\">GOP rivals<\/a> Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy and are gaining prominence among other Republicans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And if Trump wins a second term, the work from the Heritage coalition ensures the president will have the personnel to carry forward his unfinished White House business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe president Day One will be a wrecking ball for the administrative state,\u201d said Russ Vought, a former Trump administration official involved in the effort who is now president at the conservative Center for Renewing America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Much of the new president\u2019s agenda would be accomplished by reinstating what\u2019s called Schedule F \u2014 a Trump-era executive order that would reclassify tens of thousands of the 2 million federal employees as essentially at-will workers who could more easily be fired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Biden had rescinded the executive order upon taking office in 2021, but Trump \u2014 and other presidential hopefuls \u2014 now vow to reinstate it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt frightens me,\u201d said Mary Guy, a professor of public administration at the University of Colorado, who warns the idea would bring a return to a political spoils system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Experts argue Schedule F would create chaos in the civil service, which was overhauled during President Jimmy Carter\u2019s administration in an attempt to ensure a professional workforce and end political bias dating from 19th century patronage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As it now stands, just 4,000 members of the federal workforce are considered political appointees who typically change with each administration. But Schedule F could put tens of thousands of career professional jobs at risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe have a democracy that is at risk of suicide. Schedule F is just one more bullet in the gun,\u201d Guy said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The ideas contained in Heritage\u2019s coffee table-ready book are both ambitious and parochial, a mix of longstanding conservative policies and stark, head-turning proposals that gained prominence in the Trump era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There\u2019s a \u201ctop to bottom overhaul\u201d of the Department of Justice, particularly curbing its independence and ending FBI efforts to combat the spread of misinformation. It calls for stepped-up prosecution of anyone providing or distributing abortion pills by mail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are proposals to have the Pentagon \u201cabolish\u201d its recent diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, what the project calls the \u201cwoke\u201d agenda, and reinstate service members discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Chapter by chapter, the pages offer a how-to manual for the next president, similar to one Heritage produced 50 years ago, ahead of the Ronald Reagan administration. Authored by some of today\u2019s most prominent thinkers in the conservative movement, it\u2019s often sprinkled with apocalyptic language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A chapter written by Trump\u2019s former acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security calls for bolstering the number of political appointees, and redeploying office personnel with law enforcement ability into the field \u201cto maximize law enforcement capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the White House, the book suggests the new administration should \u201creexamine\u201d the tradition of providing work space for the press corps and ensure the <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/trump-indictment-jan6-riot-cipollone-philbin-b72ee539405f1f70fe34277f969a741c\">White House counsel<\/a> is \u201cdeeply committed\u201d to the president\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Conservatives have long held a grim view of federal government offices, complaining they are stacked with liberals intent on halting Republican agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u2018Federal employees are not the enemy\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But Doreen Greenwald, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said most federal workers live in the states and are your neighbors, family and friends. \u201cFederal employees are not the enemy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While presidents typically rely on Congress to put policies into place, the Heritage project leans into what legal scholars refer to as a unitary view of executive power that suggests the president has broad authority to act alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To push past senators who try to block presidential Cabinet nominees, Project 2025 proposes installing top allies in acting administrative roles, as was done during the Trump administration to bypass the Senate confirmation process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">John McEntee, another former Trump official advising the effort, said the next administration can \u201cplay hardball a little more than we did with Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In fact, Congress would see its role diminished \u2014 for example, with a proposal to eliminate congressional notification on certain foreign arms sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Philip Wallach, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies the separation of powers and was not part of the Heritage project, said there\u2019s a certain amount of \u201cfantasizing\u201d about the president\u2019s capabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSome of these visions, they do start to just bleed into some kind of authoritarian fantasies where the president won the election, so he\u2019s in charge, so everyone has to do what he says \u2014 and that\u2019s just not the system the government we live under,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the Heritage office, Dans has a faded photo on his wall of an earlier era in Washington, with the White House situated almost alone in the city, dirt streets in all directions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s an image of what conservatives have long desired, a smaller federal government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Heritage coalition is taking its recruitment efforts on the road, crisscrossing America to fill the federal jobs. They staffed the Iowa State Fair this month and signed up hundreds of people, and they\u2019re building out a database of potential employees, inviting them to be trained in government operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s counterintuitive,\u201d Dans acknowledged \u2014 the idea of joining government to shrink it \u2014 but he said that\u2019s the lesson learned from the Trump days about what\u2019s needed to \u201cregain control.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Idea is to have infrastructure in place to reshape what Republicans deride as the \u201cdeep state\u201d bureaucracy and fire as many as 50,000 government employees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":74428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":68,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[31,15,68],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2830],"class_list":["post-26062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-management","category-leadership"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"NPLDFY4OYJCO3LJQHE4FDZAHX4","arc_canonical_url":"\/management\/leadership\/2023\/08\/29\/recruiting-starts-for-plan-to-shrink-government-fire-federal-workers\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented 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