“I would say there is a general feeling of dread among everyone,” one Energy Department employee told CNN. Add to it about every department in the government looks to be excised and/or reduced under Trump. As the shock of last week’s Trump win sets in, employees who have enjoyed sitting/working at home these last couple of years, see the hatchet coming.
After you get past CNN’s hyperbole in their story below, they do a decent job of explaining just how Trump intends to accomplish the feat. Well worth sliding over and reading the whole thing. Laying waste to 110k of D.C. workers indeed would make a good start.
In his first term, Trump sidelined and ridiculed civil servants and service members, silenced government offices and stifled scientific research. Many workers quit; others stuck it out, hopeful that the 2020 election would bring a new boss in the White House.
Now they face another four years of Trump – a term that by his own account will be worse for the government workforce than his first.
“We are absolutely having conversations among ourselves about whether we can stomach a round two,” an employee at the Environmental Protection Agency said.
How Trump could gut the government
Trump’s purge could be the biggest change to the federal workforce since the late 1800s, returning the federal government to the “spoils system” of 1883 when victorious political parties gave government jobs to their supporters, said Max Stier, the president and CEO of Partnership for Public Service. The spoils system was replaced by the current merit-based system where career employees serve multiple administrations, carrying out their jobs independent of politics.
“What’s at stake here is the nature of our government, how it works and who it works for,” Stier told CNN.
A Trump transition team spokeswoman didn’t respond to CNN’s questions about when Schedule F might be put in place, or how many workers it could impact.
“The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail,” Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “He will deliver.”
Mass firings likely won’t happen on day one. The Biden administration erected temporary roadblocks at the federal Office of Personnel Management – rules aimed at protecting federal workers from retaliatory mass firings.
But Biden’s rule was never codified by Congress and could easily be reversed.
…In addition to Schedule F, the new administration is expected to use several other tactics to excise federal employees, such as mass transfers of senior executives and relocation of agency offices. Trump did this in his first term, moving the Bureau of Land Management headquarters from Washington, DC, to Grand Junction, Colorado – prompting 287 employees to either resign or retire. In a 2023 campaign video, Trump promised to move “as many as 100,000 government positions” out of DC.
There goes D.C.!
PTSD and more
🇺🇸 CNN CORRESPONDENT: FEDERAL WORKERS REPORT PTSD OVER TRUMP’S RETURN
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) November 11, 2024
CNN Correspondent René Marsh:
“We are in a new dystopian hellscape — that is from a federal employee via text message last night, and that is the mindset of many of the 2 million federal workers anticipating… pic.twitter.com/PlmmUq5j1g
The very best of the swamp.
BUNKERVILLE | God, Guns and Guts Comrades! 