If you are normal, you probably do not lose sleep about things like threats to the Pendleton Act of 1883. Why should you? Most people likely do not even know what this Act did or what it created.
But thinking about this is keeping me awake at night.
This was a historic bill in United States History that fundamentally changed how the Federal government was organized and how people gained access to government jobs. It is also called the Civil Service Act and the reason I lose sleep about this one is because it appears a 2nd Trump administration would overturn the basic foundations of the Civil Service System currently in place.
Here is what the Civil Service Act changed: it overturned decades of granting government jobs to patrons of whoever was in office. It was commonly called the “Spoils System.” Instead of granting jobs and positions to people based on merit and competency, jobs were meted out to supporters and cronies of those who won political office. It led to corruption, incompetence within the federal government, and wholesale change of thousands of positions every four years when a new election took place.
The Civil Service Act of 1883, signed by Chester Arthur, was the foundation for creating a competent, independent, and professional bureaucratic federal administrative system based on merit. Jobs in the government were no longer given out by political party patronage, but based on professional qualifications and a civil service exam, and workers were shielded from political exploitation and influence.
What this means to us today is that we have a vast array of permanent government workers (2.9 million) who have earned their positions via experience, training, and credentials. Their political persuasions are not used as a basis for hire. They run administrative departments independent of political influence and are not fired whenever a new President comes to office. It offers continuity, consistency of policy enforcement, and efficiency.
Presidents can and do make political appointments to the cabinet and other federal agencies. Normally they appoint around 4,000 government positions. These positions often come under Congressional oversight and usually change with any new Presidential administration. But that leaves over 99% of the federal bureaucracy in the hands of non-political appointees.
One can argue about how big the bureaucracy is, whether it is efficient or too bloated; but what a 2nd Trump term would mean is the dismantling of this system based on professional non-political appointments and the reinstatement of the 19th century “Spoils System.”
Let me explain…and this will keep you up at night too.
Donald Trump constantly complains about the so-called “deep state” which, if it has a definition, probably includes much of that 2.9 million bureaucratic structure. Trump claims it is staffed and run by Marxists, liberals, and Democrats who stymie his goals and are “out to get him.” Trump has convinced enough people that it is a problem that the conservative Heritage Foundation has concocted a way to deal with it.
It is called PROJECT 2025.
Project 2025 includes four elements: The 900-plus-page Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise details the right’s agenda for each major department and agency in the federal government; the Playbook, a still secret compilation of executive orders and initiatives for the first 180 days of the administration; a right-wing “LinkedIn” designed to recruit and vet thousands of MAGA movement operatives to staff the government; and a Presidential Administration Academy to train them on how to operate (according to MAGA objectives).
If you don’t want to read 900 pages of the “Mandate” let me break it down partially for you here. This is where it gets scary.
The priority of Project 2025 will be to bring the permanent bureaucracy to heel. No more “adults in the room” to curb Trump’s impulses. No more civil servants loyal more to the law than to the president. Trump will revive his “Schedule F” executive order to turn high-level civil service jobs over to political appointees. Instead of the normal 4,000 presidential political appointments, Project 2025 now suggests aiming for 50,000 or more. Many of the other 2.9 million federal jobs will simply be eliminated in the name of “smaller government.”
Institutionalizing Trumpism
In other words, this plan will “institutionalize Trumpism.” It will make MAGA no longer a movement of extreme base voters, but the governing principle of the federal government.
Paul Dans is the director of the 2025 project and writes in his introductory note,
The long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before. Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State.
Many, many good people are going to lose their jobs and either have them eliminated, or replaced by MAGA appointees whose only qualifications are their commitment to Donald Trump and supporting whatever he does, regardless of the law. Note Dans’ comments that appointees must be “conservatives” who are “aligned,” “vetted”, “trained,” and prepared to work from day one to deconstruct the “liberal” administrative state.
But this deconstruction isn’t just about efficiency or cost savings. It is ideological. One of the prime objectives is to wield “federal power” to “rescue America’s kids from familial breakdown” and “restore the American family.”
These are conservative code words that include “deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (‘SOGI’), diversity, equity and inclusion (‘DEI’), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights…out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation and piece of legislation that exists.”
Do you need more nightmare material? Here you go:
The “Plan” pledges to “muzzle woke propaganda at every level of government,” particularly ending “the Left’s social experimentation with the military.” The DOD would be purged of “Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs.” Policies that allow “transgender individuals to serve” would be terminated. Any involvement in diversity, equity, and inclusion activities, the Treasury Department section notes, would be “grounds for termination of employment.”
Here is some more nightmarish information about the “Plan.”
“Climate fanaticism” would require a “whole of government unwinding.” Scientific bodies would be purged and research terminated in national laboratories. EPA regulatory powers would be curbed.
USAID (United States Agency for International Development), would be directed to “cease its war on fossil fuels in the developing world.” The next administration would “rescind all climate policies from its foreign aid programs, shut down “offices, programs, and directives designed to advance the Paris Climate Agreement,” and “cease collaborating” with progressive foundations, corporations, or NGOs that “advocate on behalf of climate fanaticism.”
Had enough? Here is more:
Heritage’s Mandate doesn’t name targets, but the “targets” will be whoever Trump says they are. The Justice Department chapter in the Plan emphasizes that the DOJ is not independent but “falls under the direct supervision and control of the President.… Litigation decisions must be made consistent with the President’s agenda.” In other words, the President’s revenge list is the target of the DOJ which would act as the President’s personal retribution agency.
Then there is that pesky MAGA issue of immigration:
Under the Plan, military funds would be used to erect sprawling camps to hold undocumented detainees. Military forces would be assigned to the border. A public health emergency would be invoked to shut down asylum requests by people arriving at the border. Millions would begin deportation, and the government would try to end birthright citizenship for babies born on US soil to undocumented parents.
True conservatives can take heart in the traditional embrace of regulatory rollback and tax cuts—on corporations, estates, dividends, and capital gains. The rich will indeed get richer and the middle class will continue its decline into the working poor.
Good Ole Fashioned Political Purging
Being a historian, I can’t resist the tendency to look for, and unfortunately discover, antecedents to this type of political purging that a Trump second term would facilitate. Political purging is common in an autocratic-authoritarian state, and there are five examples I can mention (this is not comprehensive).
Hitler, 1934
Hitler used a combination of the ballot box and bullying to gain power in Germany in 1933. The Sturmabteilung (SA), otherwise known as the "brownshirts", acted as the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. Under charismatic leader Ernst Roehm, they beat up and intimidated potential opponents during the 1920s and early 1930s. However, by 1934 they had become too powerful.
Between 30 June and 2 July, Roehm and dozens of other SA leaders were shot dead. The incident became known as the Night of the Long Knives. Although the SA continued to exist, the purge had hobbled it.
Stalin, 1934-1939
Stalin used the killing of his right-hand man, Sergei Kirov, as a pretext for launching a ferocious purge of the leadership. Dozens of party leaders were subsequently exiled or killed, often after show trials where they were accused of being in league with Leon Trotsky, Stalin's rival for the leadership who fled in 1929. Relatives, friends, and even possible sympathizers of anyone labeled a traitor were brutally despatched.
Saddam Hussein, 1979
When Saddam came to power, he carried out a very public purge of more than 60 senior members of the ruling Baath Party, the organization that had put him in his post as president. Black-and-white video footage shows Saddam smoking a cigar as various politicians are denounced as traitors. They were led away until only about half of the members were left.
Deng Xiaoping, 1980
After Mao Zedong died in 1976, a bitter power struggle broke out at the top of the Communist Party. By 1978 Mao's chosen successor Hua Guofeng had been usurped by Deng Xiaoping, a reformer who had earlier been frozen out by Mao. In 1980, some of Mao's most extreme allies were put on trial. It was a political show trial accompanied by a massive propaganda campaign denouncing the so-called Gang of Four. It was designed to cement the power of the new leadership under Deng.
Than Shwe, 2004
Until 2010, one man dominated the politics of Burma (also known as Myanmar): Than Shwe, a self-styled senior general who reigned imperiously for more than two decades. For a brief time, however, a younger more charismatic general, Khin Nyunt, threatened to upset the power balance. As prime minister and head of military intelligence, he had built a substantial power base. He even established a newspaper. Than Shwe acted quickly, deposing him, and then putting him on trial for corruption and bribery. He was jailed in 2005 for 44 years but freed from house arrest a few years later.
My point here, beyond scaring you, is to show that regimes like the one the Heritage Foundation is forming have happened in history many times. Authoritarian governments, especially those rooted in religious beliefs, are opposed to any opposition to their power. They take action to purge their opponents.
I’m not suggesting that within the American system, a purge will look like the ones in Germany or the Soviet Union, but given Trump’s penchant for authoritarian leaders, image if you will, having the power of the administrative state under his control, instead of a counterweight to his worst inclinations. Yeah, it is the stuff of nightmares.
One thing is for sure. If Trump were to win a second term, that second administration would look nothing like his first…it would be far, far worse.