Experts expect "heads on spikes to make an example" as soon as Trump takes office

With some of President-elect Donald Trump’s allies promising to dismantle entire federal departments and the incoming administration laying the groundwork for mass layoffs, experts say Trump is likely to start with targeted firings aimed at making an example of specific civil servants as he tests the waters in his second administration.

While the incoming Trump administration is laying the groundwork to change the rules to be able to fire civil servants en masse, Don Kettl, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, told Salon that he expects them to try making an example of a few key targets first.

“Henry VIII didn't need to kill them all, he just needed to kill a few,” Kettl said. “He just needed some heads on spikes to make an example.”

The Heritage Foundation has, for example, circulated a list of targets at United States Citizenship and Immigration Services that they believe are “in league with left-wing open border groups” and that would like to see removed from the civil service. Kettl said Trump’s allies probably have similar lists for the Environmental Protection Agency and the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department and other agencies the president and his allies feel were insufficiently loyal in his first term.

“Only a fool would try to dismiss large numbers of federal employees,” Kettl said. “It’s one thing to throw sand in the gears of the federal government, it’s another to try to destroy it.”

However, the first steps towards either mass dismissals or targeted example-making will be the same — reviving a policy first instituted in Oct. 2020 by an executive order creating an employment category known as “Schedule F.”

In the federal government, civil servants are divided into different employment categories. In 2020, Trump created Schedule F as a new classification for those whose role is “of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character.” 

For those seeking to dismantle the administrative state or particular departments, the important part is that Schedule F civil servants would not enjoy the same employment protections afforded most civil servants and would instead be at-will employees, who could be easily dismissed.

Many estimates have floated a figure of around 50,000 federal employees whose positions could be reclassified to Schedule F. However, the National Treasury Employee Union has warned that, according to its review of Trump-era documents from the Office of Management and Budget, the number of potential Schedule F civil servants could be much higher. 

Critics have panned the plan as a return to the spoils system, in which a political figure would reward loyalists with government appointments, and a break from merit-based civil service, which has existed in one form or another since the Pendleton Act’s passage in 1883. Since the act's passage, it has been illegal to fire merit-selected civil servants for political reasons. Schedule F would serve as a way around these protections.

President Joe Biden introduced federal regulations earlier this year aimed at blocking Trump from reinstituting Schedule F through the Office of Personnel Management. Kettl said, however, that because these regulations were done through the executive branch and not legislation, Trump will probably be able to undo them very quickly. 

“Anything that is put in regulation can be removed by regulation,” Kettl told Salon. “If they wanted they could institute an interim final rule at 12:30 pm on January 20th.”

Once in power, Kettl explained, the question for the Trump administration will be “what kind of signals do they want to send and legally what kind of process do they want to go through?” 

Ronald Sanders, a senior fellow at George Washington University’s Center for Excellence in Public Leadership, who has worked on nine presidential transitions and held positions across the federal government, told Salon that between Schedule F and the power the president maintains over the rest of the federal workforce, the incoming administration has laid the groundwork to dismiss people first and resolve outstanding issues later.

“In a word, it's pretty complicated but if the Trump administration wanted to run roughshod over that and basically say ‘you’re fired,’ they could and let the Merit Systems Protection Board and the courts sort it all out and it's my suspicion that that is what will happen,” Sanders said.

According to Sanders, however, there are reasons why the Trump administration might choose not to pursue mass layoffs out of the gate first. The first reason is that even Republicans do not want “large numbers of laid-off civil servants in their districts.” 

The second is that the combination of the threat of Schedule F, promises to move government jobs out of Washington D.C., and the introduction of political considerations into what were once merit-based roles may be enough to engender mass resignations.

The American Federation of Government Employees has warned about, with the union’s policy director, Jacqueline Simon, telling the Hill that they’re expecting an “exodus.”

“They do not want to be political appointees. They don’t want politics to interfere with any aspect of their job,” Simon said.

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Sanders noted that such an exodus could be just as destructive to administrative agencies while not being subject to the same legal scrutiny as mass firings. Sanders said that, often, the people who leave the civil service voluntarily in such a scenario are those who can find the most attractive job offers elsewhere or may be near retirement, meaning an exodus would erode institutional memory in these departments.

Several legal grey areas will likely need to be resolved in court and could complicate a scheme to reclassify tens of thousands of civil servants as Schedule F or to fire them. Encouraging voluntary resignations wouldn’t have the same hang-ups.

In Sanders’ opinion, the biggest legal issue is whether veterans would retain their right to appeal a dismissal even if their position was reclassified as Schedule F. Given that veterans account for 30% of the federal workforce, this represents a significant complication.

Sanders, who resigned from his position as chair of the Federal Salary Council over Schedule F during the first Trump administration, noted that he is an “unashamed Republican” but that he worries about “an ulterior motive” behind the staffing changes.

While proponents of Schedule F say the policy is meant to ensure the federal government is responsive to elections, Sanders said he’s concerned the changes are intended to ensure loyalty and to “prevent those agencies from doing their jobs” via understaffing. 

Sanders also said that, regardless of intent, introducing this level of political consideration into civil service positions stands to compromise the advice that civil servants give to the administration.

“Civil servants are empowered to give frank and fearless advice to their political masters,” Sanders said. “You don't want them to tell a political appointee what they think that political appointee wants to hear — you want them to tell the truth.”