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To: Les H who wrote (44939)	2/12/2025 8:39:06 PM
From: Les H	Respond to of 50987

The Purge The imminent government-wide implementation of Schedule F will go far toward transforming the federal bureaucracy into an extension of presidential power. Conor Lynch, Truth Dig When Donald Trump issued the original executive order known as Schedule F in late 2020, it was widely condemned by a broad spectrum of critics as a thinly veiled effort to install loyalists throughout the federal bureaucracy. Under the pretense of “restoring accountability,” the order created a new “exempted service” in the federal workforce that effectively stripped career employees working on policy of their civil service protections. At the time, experts estimated that the order could impact hundreds of thousands of federal workers, instantly making them at-will employees who could be easily dismissed by the president without cause or any due process. While presented as an honest effort to hold federal employees “more accountable” for their performance, critics like Ron Sanders were deeply skeptical of this claim. Though a lifelong Republican who had been appointed by Trump as chair of the Federal Salary Council in 2017, he could not condone what he saw as a transparent ruse to politicize the civil service. In his resignation letter, Sanders described Schedule F as a clear attempt to “replace apolitical expertise with political obeisance” and to “make loyalty to [the president] the litmus test for many thousands of career civil servants.” Though Schedule F never got past the initial planning stage — Trump was defeated a few weeks after he signed it, and Biden quickly rescinded the order — it has since become de facto doctrine on the right. For conservatives, the creation of a new “exempted service” is now seen as an essential policy tool in their project to root out “disloyalty” and, ultimately, to “deconstruct” the “administrative state.” During the 2024 Republican presidential primaries, virtually all of the candidates supported the policy, and frontrunner Trump vowed to reinstate it on his first day back in office. Sure enough, Trump kept his word, reviving Schedule F on Day 1, albeit with some alterations, including a name change to “ Schedule Policy/Career” and several amendments that appear to have been added in response to criticisms of the original order. In an effort to get ahead of the inevitable accusations of politicizing the civil service, the new order includes a provision that explicitly denies that federal employees will be required to “personally or politically support the current President or the policies of the current administration.” In the new language, employees will be required to “faithfully implement administration policies to the best of their ability.” In guidance issued last week, the Office of Personnel Management further included a section titled “Patronage Remains Prohibited,” stating that positions under the new classification “remain career positions.” At least one critic of the president is hopeful the new text will prevent some of the worst abuses he had feared in the original Schedule F. In a conversation last week, Sanders told me that the new provision “alleviates a lot of the concerns” that he had in 2020. While the order could still ultimately be used to install loyalists — and the “proof will be in the implementation” — Sanders believes the new language about political loyalty tipped the scales in favor of “policy alignment,” which he believes is a “good thing.” Few other critics share Sanders’ optimism. “It’s not because they had a change of heart in what they wanted to accomplish,” the president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, Max Stier, told me. “You have a large number of actions taken by the new administration that have one common thread when it comes to personnel, and that is to blow up the existing system and replace it with people who are loyalists,” he said. Truthdig