President-elect Donald Trump is poised to seize greater control of the federal government than any modern president before him when he takes office on Monday, charging ahead with plans to dismantle what he and his allies call the “deep state,” according to two sources familiar with transition discussions.
The effort could get underway as early as Trump’s first day as president, according to one of the sources, with an executive order aimed at stripping job protections from an estimated 50,000 career federal employees, allowing their replacement by handpicked loyalist appointees.
The Trump administration will also push to fill the thousands of political appointments across government as soon as possible, another source told Reuters.
The goal is to inject political loyalists deep into the workings of government, perhaps more so that any other recent president.
In a harbinger of what may lie ahead, Trump’s team has requested the resignation of three senior career diplomats who oversee the U.S. State Department’s workforce and internal coordination, Reuters reported this week.
Trump allies blame bureaucrats they deem disloyal for thwarting his agenda during his first term in the White House by slow-walking initiatives in the Justice Department, the Department of Education and other agencies.
Nearly a dozen of Trump’s top appointees for his second term have been given an explicit mandate to shake up the federal workforce or expressed support for those plans, according to personnel announcements and media interviews reviewed by Reuters.
Russell Vought, nominated by Trump to return as director of the Office of Management and Budget, played a central role in crafting an earlier version of the reclassification order, known as Schedule F, as Trump was leaving office in 2020.
The revived executive order on Schedule F would allow agency officials to reclassify positions from career posts to political appointments, one of the sources familiar with transition planning said.
FIRING LINES
FINDING TARGETS
During Senate confirmation hearings on Wednesday, Vought and Bondi expressed support for the policies behind Schedule F.
Vought testified that he believes portions of the federal government have been “weaponized.”
He declined to answer questions about whether he had advised Trump to conduct mass firings, but said reclassifying career employees would ensure the president has individuals in a policy-making role “who are responding to his views, his agenda.”
Bondi, during her hearing, said Special Counsel Jack Smith’s probe of Trump was evidence of partisanship within the Justice Department.
She vowed not to use the department to target people based on their politics, but dodged direct questions about investigating Trump’s political adversaries.
The Biden Justice Department has long denied that it pursued criminal cases against Trump for political reasons. It did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.
The process of identifying members of the federal bureaucracy whose views could be at odds with the incoming administration has already begun.
In December, the American Accountability Foundation, which operates with support from the conservative Heritage Foundation, sent a letter to Pentagon nominee Pete Hegseth naming 20 leaders across the U.S. military whom it deemed to be overly focused on diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Outgoing Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has defended such efforts, saying the diverse military reflects the diversity of the United States.
