‘Distressing’: Republicans Eyeing 2024 Race Support Plot to Purge Federal Workers

Multiple potential candidates for the GOP’s 2024 presidential primary race support former President Donald Trump’s plot to make it easier to purge civil servants deemed disloyal to their prospective administrations, Axios revealed Wednesday.

“It is distressing that leading contenders from one of our major political parties—not just Donald Trump—are reportedly committed to undercutting nonpolitical government employees, another step to significantly weaken our system of checks and balances,” Noah Bookbinder, president and CEO of the government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) stated.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) confirmed they “support using a measure like Schedule F to reform the federal bureaucracy,” according to Axios‘ Alayna Treene.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis along with Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) “wouldn’t speak to Schedule F specifically, but they showed openness to the approach,” Treene noted.

Meanwhile, former Vice President Mike Pence, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) declined to comment.

Shortly before losing the 2020 presidential election, Trump signed an executive order to create a new Schedule F category of federal employees who are easier to fire.

Though President Joe Biden rescinded the order, if Trump runs again in two years and wins, he may revive the plan to reclassify thousands of workers, which analysts condemned as “authoritarianism 101” and “a fascist takeover of our government.”

Donald Moynihan, a professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, recently wrote for Slate that “Schedule F would burn down the civil service system. It would be a government of the lawless leading the incompetent.”

Fears about a Republican administration taking such action have grown since U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) last week unveiled the Public Service Reform Act, which he said would “empower federal agencies to swiftly address misconduct and remove underperforming or ill-willed employees.”

As Common Dreams reported, Don Kettl, professor emeritus and former dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, said of Roy’s move that “this is obviously a huge and major change, an effort to gear up a major assault on the federal employment system.”

Kettl also warned that such efforts “aren’t just Trump necessarily, and if Republicans take control of Congress following the midterms, this may very well go from idea to specific action.”

Originally published at Commondreams.org.