Trump White House Vets Have Farreaching Plans To Dismantle Federal Government: ‘We Have A Democracy That Is At Risk Of Suicide
With the 2024 election more than a year away, a group of conservative organizations are gearing up for Donald Trump's second term in the White House, recruiting thousands of Americans to Washington to dismantle and replace the federal government. . A vision in itself.
Led by the longtime Heritage Foundation think tank and led by former Trump administration officials, the long-running effort is essentially an effort by the administration to secure a second term for the former president or any candidate who fits his ambitions and can win the election. the presidency. Joe Biden in 2024.
About 1,000 copies of the "Project 2025" manual and the idea for American "soldiers" was to build civilian infrastructure every day to somehow transform what Republicans saw as the "deep state" bureaucracy and destroy it. Another is to lay off up to 50,000 federal employees.
"We need to fill this area with conservatives," said Paul Dance, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project and a former Trump administration official, as he recounted the history of the effort.
"It's a clarion call to come to Washington," he said. "People need to put down their tools, step away from their professional lives and say, 'This is a time in my life to serve.'"
The unprecedented number of dozens of far-right organizations, many of them new to Washington, represents a departure from conservatives who have traditionally sought to limit the federal government through tax cuts and federal spending cuts.
By contrast, Trump-era conservatives want to destroy the "administrative state" from within, firing federal employees they see as obstructions to the president's agenda and replacing them with officials willing to adopt a new executive management style to seize power. . .
The goal was to avoid the pain of Trump's first years in office, when the Republican presidential team was ill-prepared, his cabinet nominees struggled for confirmation in the Senate and his policies faced opposition — from lawmakers, officials and even individuals. - they themselves are Trump's representatives. He is not willing to bend or break protocol and in some cases even break the law to achieve his goals.
Although many proposals for Bill 2025 were Trump-inspired, it has the support of Republican rivals Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy and is gaining traction among other Republicans.
And if Trump wins a second term, the old coalition will have staff to handle the unfinished business of the White House and try to get the president approved.
"The first day of the presidency is going to be a disaster for the government of the country," said Russ Vaught, a former Trump administration official involved in the effort and now president of the American Conservative Center.
Much of the new president's agenda will be accomplished by reinstating what's known as Schedule F, a Trump-era regulation that cuts tens of thousands of federal employees to 2 million casual workers who can be easily fired.
Biden in 2010. After taking office in 2021, he rescinded the executive order, but Trump (and other presidential candidates) have promised to reinstate it.
"It scares me," says Mary Guy, a professor of public administration at the University of Colorado, warning that the idea could lead to political destruction.
Experts say Program F, reformed under President Jimmy Carter to professionalize the civil service and end political bias that dates back to the 19th century, will wreak havoc on the civil service.
Currently, 4,000 federal employees are considered political officers, who usually rotate between governments. But List F threatens tens of thousands of professional jobs.
"We have a democracy that is in danger of self-destruction. Annex F is another bullet,” Guy said.
The ideas contained in this traditional journal are longstanding, limited, ambitious conservative policies and bold, compelling proposals that have become popular in the Trump era.
The "big reform" of the Department of Justice, in particular, reducing its independence and ending the FBI's efforts to fight the spread of disinformation. This law requires that anyone who ships or distributes abortion pills be prosecuted.
There is speculation that the Pentagon will "rescind" the recent Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiative, which the bill calls the Revival program, and reinstate military personnel fired for refusing the Covid-19 vaccine.
Chapter by chapter, the pages offer recommendations for the next president, similar to the legacy published 50 years before Ronald Reagan's administration. Written by leading thinkers in the modern conservative movement, this book is often steeped in apocalyptic language.
The chapter, written by Trump's former acting deputy secretary of homeland security, calls for increasing the number of political officers and sending officers with law enforcement skills into the field "to enhance law enforcement capacity."
The White House said in the book that the new administration will "reexamine" its culture of press outsourcing and that White House advisers are "deeply committed" to the president's agenda.
Conservatives have long been negative about federal offices, complaining that they are full of liberals who want to stop the GOP agenda.
But Doreen Greenwald, national president of the National Union of Treasury Employees, says most federal employees live stateside and are your neighbors, family and friends. “Federal employees are not the enemy.
While presidents rely on Congress to implement policy, the Heritage project is based on what legal experts call a unified view of the executive branch, showing that the president has broad powers to act on his own.
To prevent senators from trying to oust presidential nominees from the cabinet, Project 2025 proposes placing key allies in leadership positions, as was done during the Trump administration, to bypass the Senate confirmation process.
John McEntee, another former Trump official who noted the effort, said the next administration "could be tougher than what we did with Congress."
Effectively narrows the role of Congress (for example, with a proposal to eliminate congressional notification of certain foreign arms sales).
Philip Wallach, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies the separation of powers and is not involved with the Legacy Project, said there is some "fantasy" about the president's abilities.
"Part of this vision where the president wins the election is in power and everyone has to do what he says, it becomes an authoritarian fantasy," he says.
In the memorial office, Dance hung on the wall faded photographs of Washington's last administration, where the White House stood alone in a city of dirt roads.
It's a snapshot of what conservatives have long sought: a smaller federal government.
The Heritage Coalition is cross-recruiting for federal positions across the United States. At the Iowa State Fair this month, they registered hundreds of employees, created a hiring database and invited them to training for government jobs.
"It's counterintuitive," he said, objecting not to Dance (the idea of joining the government to reduce power) but to the lesson the Trump administration has learned about what it takes to "take back control."
