Trump vows to fire bureaucrats. Here’s why Biden is trying to stop him.

For decades, American presidents routinely offered government jobs to political allies – and expected those employees would do their bidding in return.

Then in 1881, a campaign supporter who did not win such a favor assassinated President James Garfield. That proved to be a tipping point, spurring the creation of a civil service mostly staffed by nonpartisan workers selected on merit, not on political allegiance. 

Nearly a century and a half later, the two presidential front-runners are debating whether to keep it that way.

Former President Donald Trump has threatened to fire thousands of “rogue bureaucrats” if he wins the election this fall, as part of his plan to dismantle what he calls “the deep state.” In response, the Biden administration has issued a new rule, which goes into effect this month, shielding the civil service against “corruption and partisan interference.”

The tussle comes against a backdrop of growing polarization and declining trust in institutions. Two years ago, just 52% of Americans said they had confidence in career government employees – a 9-point dip from four years earlier. 

Central to the debate is a tension over whether unelected civil servants really are nonpartisan. Many Republicans see the government as a liberal-leaning bureaucracy – and indeed, a 2021 study found that the plurality of career civil servants are Democrats, an overrepresentation that increased with seniority. From 1997 to 2019, the share of Democrats hovered around 50%, while the share of Republicans ranged from 32% in 1997 to 26% in 2019.

But these federal workers – many of whom say they are committed to working in a nonpartisan way – also bring valuable institutional knowledge and policy expertise from one administration to the next. Replacing them en masse every four years could disrupt government functions, including services that millions of Americans rely on.  

“Probably presidents of both parties find that they are sometimes frustrated that the permanent agencies are not as responsive to [their objectives] as they would like,” says James Capretta, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “What’s at stake here, really, is balancing that objective, which is legitimate, against another equally legitimate objective – which is that the electorate, the voters, also want some confidence in government and good public services.”  

How Trump’s plan would change the civil service

George Washington University Professor Christopher Kojm, a former State Department employee who also served as deputy director of the 9/11 Commission, has encouraged many of his students to enter the civil service. 

“I told young people: Whatever your politics are, the public sector needs you. It needs your talent, idealism, enthusiasm,” says Professor Kojm.

Among them is Vanessa DuBoulay, a civil servant at the Department of Justice. “At the end of the day, we serve broader U.S. objectives. We serve our taxpayers,” she says. “Remaining nonpartisan is the only way we can truly commit to that.” 

Since World War II, the civil service has encompassed about 90% of the federal workforce. Today’s 2.2 million civil servants work on everything from collecting military intelligence to assessing the safety of America’s food supply. Unlike those in the more than 4,000 positions that each new president appoints, they can’t be fired for political reasons, only for failure to perform duties.

Mr. Trump’s plan would change that. In fall 2020, then-President Trump unveiled an executive order known as Schedule F that would have removed job protections for tens of thousands of civil servants, notably those involved in making or implementing policy. Career employees would become, in effect, political appointees. 

The Trump administration said the move was necessary to address long delays and substandard work on important agency projects. It cited a 2016 survey that found that fewer than one-quarter of federal workers believed their agency handled “poor performers” effectively.

Mr. Trump was also infuriated by anonymous federal employees who proclaimed themselves part of an internal “resistance” that was working to undermine or block what they viewed as the president’s “misguided impulses.” A May 2023 academic article found that civil servants in the Trump administration “largely complied” with political directives but at times “resisted” in ways that “helped mitigate perceived harm to agency missions,” for example by slow-walking projects.

Critics view Schedule F as rooted in Mr. Trump’s desire to assert greater power over the executive branch and remove anyone who stands in his way – particularly lawyers within the Department of Justice, which he says has been “weaponized” against him. 

President Joe Biden reversed the order as soon as he took office. Mr. Biden’s new rule “clarifies and reinforces” long-standing protections of civil servants, but could be overturned by a future president – though experts say that could result in a lengthy legal challenge.

From 4,000 new political appointees ... to 50,000?

The battle is playing out alongside Project 2025, a conservative initiative organized by The Heritage Foundation to empower a new Republican administration to “rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left.” It includes a 920-page policy playbook and a database of “properly vetted” candidates to carry out that agenda. While Heritage has recommended presidential personnel in the past, this appears far greater in scope than previous efforts. Heritage, after numerous interview requests, declined to speak with the Monitor. 

Conservatives have long been concerned about the size and reach of the federal bureaucracy. But there is debate, even on the right, about whether Schedule F is the right solution.

Philip Wallach, another senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, acknowledges that many conservatives – including those who, like him, are not Trump supporters – were “really troubled” by the way executive branch employees adopted a “#resistance mentality from Day 1 of the Trump administration.” 

So he understands the impetus for civil service reforms.

“I see it as a pretty justifiable fight to pick,” says Mr. Wallach. But “just because it’s justifiable doesn’t mean that it can’t be taken to excess.” 

If the next president rolls back the new Biden administration rule and adopts Schedule F, it would reclassify an estimated 50,000 civil servants, opening the way for Project 2025 candidates to enter the administration in much higher numbers than the usual 4,000 appointees. In addition, some say the threat of firing could have a chilling effect on those who remain. 

What high turnover can mean for a president – and citizens

In the first year of a presidency, there is typically a 21% increase in turnover among the highest-ranked civil servants.

Professor David E. Lewis of Vanderbilt University says such turnover can be good. It weeds out employees who have serious qualms about serving an administration. But he’s concerned that Mr. Trump’s plan could replace quality with partisan loyalty.

“The evidence we have shows pretty consistently that efforts to politicize the bureaucracy result in lower performance overall,” says Professor Lewis, who studies productivity and politicization in the public sector. 

Many of the new hires would have far less institutional knowledge, particularly when it comes to complex regulations and their implementation. 

“This is not something where you sit through a three-hour training video and now you know how to do this,” says a civil servant at the Department of Treasury, speaking on background because of his organization’s ethics policy about political commentary.  

Some members of Congress, including both Democrats and Republicans from states with large numbers of federal workers, have been working on legislation that would further codify protections for civil servants. 

“We have a short list of draft laws that we’d like passed,” prohibiting things like political loyalty oaths, says Steve Lenkart, executive director of the National Federation of Federal Employees. But those efforts have met with “a lot of resistance,” Mr. Lenkart says, from Republicans.

Scholars and federal workers also worry that just the possibility of losing job protections may cause many more civil servants to resign. In a worst-case scenario, they say, that could have far-reaching implications.

“If all of a sudden there was a mass exodus of career civil servants, there would be widespread fallout across the range of government services. People wouldn’t get their Social Security checks; people wouldn’t be able to get passports,” says Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. “People would quickly learn how vital civil servants are to day-to-day living.”

Staff writer Christa Case Bryant contributed reporting.