In preparation for Biden loss, the administrative state is making it harder for Trump to fire obstructive bureaucrats

The Biden administration took a major step this week to ensure that federal bureaucrats can be just as unaccountable and resistive under a potential Trump presidency next year as they were during his first term.

Trump tries to Schedule F the 'resistance'

One month prior to the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump issued an executive order establishing a new Schedule F employment category for federal employees, making it easier to remove insubordinate and poorly performing bureaucrats from an estimated pool of 50,000 eligible candidates. After all, civil servants, some self-described and others dubbed by the media as the "resistance," had worked for years to prevent the democratically elected president from executing the will of the American people.

Prior to its bankruptcy and shuttering, Vice excitedly reported that federal civil servants were "waging bureaucratic war against Trump," threatening to scrub documents, hide information, and refer "items for legal review as a way to chew up time."

"While such intentional foot-dragging may sound borderline treasonous to some, ... this sort of bureaucratic firewall is employed only by those civil servants who legitimately feel they're protecting the long-term interests of their country," reported the defunct publication.

"You're going to see the bureaucrats using time to their advantage," one Department of Justice employee told the Washington Post in 2017. "People here will resist and push back against orders they find unconscionable."

Vanity Fair reported that some bureaucrats even remained in contact with Biden appointees "to learn more about how they can undermine Trump's agenda and attending workshops on how to effectively engage in civil disobedience."

Federal employees evidently would have much preferred to have done the bidding of failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The Hill reported that 95% of all campaign donations from 14 government agencies went to Clinton ahead of the 2016 election. More than 99% of contributions from the State Department, 94% from IRS employees, and the supermajority from DOJ employees went to Clinton.

Biden shields the deep state

President Joe Biden, who had little to fear from the administrative state that helped get him elected, reversed course in January 2021. He revoked Schedule F via executive order, claiming it "undermined the foundations of the civil service and its merit system principles."

Now that there's a strong chance Trump will return to the White House, the Biden administration is taking steps to ensure the "resistance" can go back to hamstringing the commander in chief.

The Biden administration announced a new rule Thursday aimed at further protecting federal employees from being ousted under a framework resembling Schedule F.

According to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the rule clarifies "that the status and civil service protections an employee has accrued cannot be taken away by an involuntary move from the competitive service to the excepted service, or from one excepted service schedule to another. Once a career civil servant earns protections, that employee retains them unless waived voluntarily."

Additionally, the rule clarifies that the exception previously applied by the Trump administration to a host of career civil servants only applies to noncareer, political appointments.

To further shield bureaucrats from accountability, the Biden administration has also established an appeals process for federal employees, whereby they can fight ousters or the loss of civil service protections.

"This final rule honors our 2.2 million career civil servants, helping ensure that people are hired and fired based on merit and that they can carry out their duties based on their expertise and not political loyalty," OPM director Kiran Ahuja said in a statement. "The Biden-Harris Administration is deeply committed to the federal workforce, as these professionals are vital to our national security, our health, our economic prosperity, and much more."

A Thursday statement attributed to Biden framed the new rule as a means of protecting 2.2 million bureaucrats "from political interference, to guarantee that they can carry out their responsibilities in the best interest of the American people."

"This rule is a step toward combatting corruption and partisan interference to ensure civil servants are able to focus on the most important task at hand: delivering for the American people," continued the statement.

A reckoning with a handicap

When Trump first created Schedule F, he noted, "Faithful execution of the law requires that the President have appropriate management oversight regarding this select cadre of professionals."

"Given the importance of the functions they discharge, employees in such positions must display appropriate temperament, acumen, impartiality, and sound judgment," continued the Republican president. "Due to these requirements, agencies should have a greater degree of appointment flexibility with respect to these employees than is afforded by the existing competitive service process."

"Separating employees who cannot or will not meet required performance standards is important, and it is particularly important with regard to employees in confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating positions. High performance by such employees can meaningfully enhance agency operations, while poor performance can significantly hinder them," added Trump.

While in years past, Trump has routinely vowed to "drain the swamp," Government Executive indicated he got more specific during a 2022 speech in South Carolina.

"We will pass critical reforms making every executive branch employee fireable by the president of the United States," said Trump. "The deep state must and will be brought to hell."

That same year, sources close to Trump told Axios that the Republican front-runner was especially keen to shake up the national security apparatus; to "clean house" in the intelligence community and State Department; to oust the "woke generals" in the Department of Defense; and effectively decapitate the Justice Department and FBI.

Concerns have been mounting in recent months in Washington, D.C., over the prospect of Trump making good on his promises.

Kevin Munoz, a spokesman for Biden's campaign, warned the Associated Press in February that Trump "is already telegraphing plays straight out of the authoritarian playbook — gutting the civil service of people he deems disloyal and plotting revenge on his political enemies."

Axios reported that should Trump return to the White House and seek to reverse this new rule, doing so might take months and involve legal challenges. For starters, he would have to direct the matter to the OPM to draft new rules.

James Sherk, the director of the Center for American Freedom at the American First Policy Institute, suggested several weeks ahead of the OPM's announcement, "The federal workforce has ideologically polarized, and this rulemaking would impede the ability of presidents whose views differ from the bureaucracy’s to implement their agendas."

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