Jonathan Swann’s two-part investigative report into an obscure executive order to convert career officials into political appointees has made Schedule F something that the national media is, belatedly, paying attention to.
I’ve been focused on this topic for a couple of years now, warning about the dangers of a tool like Schedule F under a populist leader with an authoritarian mien. Swann’s reporting confirms my worst fears.
Here, I review some of my work on this topic that give you a primer on what Schedule F is, and why I think it represents a threat to not just state capacity, but to democracy itself, comparable to the Big Lie movement to overturn the elections. There is still time for responsible Republicans to block its return, and if they don’t, they are culpable for the abuses that will follow.
Public Management for Populists (Public Administration Review)
This short paper covers the origins of Schedule F, the underlying philosophy that guides it
Key excerpts:
Schedule F would have allowed political appointees to turn any career official with a policy advisory role into a political appointee, removing job protection for tens or even hundreds or thousands of public servants.
The Trump administration developed the most significant proposed change to the federal civil service since its inception in relative secrecy, via executive order rather than legislation, relying on a view of administration emerging from conservative think-tanks and legal theory rather than public administration scholarship or practice.
While proposed as a means to improve political responsiveness and performance-based accountability, the effort invited a politicization akin to both the US spoils systems and populist regimes that seek to capture control of independent institutions of governance.
Congress needs to establish clear limits in its delegation of personnel power to the executive branch to prevent wholesale politicization
Populism in any setting reflects a marriage of general practices and local conditions. In the US, the Republican suspicion of bureaucracy and embrace of unitary executive theory are critical local conditions, reflected in the two justifications provided by the text of the Schedule F executive order. First, accountability for the executive branch rested with the president, and thus he had the right to do what he wished. Second, the performance of the executive branch was impaired by the fact it was difficult to fire people. It is the president who sets performance standards. If his personal expectations are disappointed, he may, according to the order, remove who he wishes. No other party may suggest transparent rule-based standards that diminish the president’s preferences.
The US civil service system has been built on a different set of assumptions, valuing formal and apolitical systems of selection and evaluation, defined by Congressional legislation, where civil servants must respond to Congress, and where legislation like the GPRA Modernization Act explicitly lays out a role for Congress in setting goals (Kroll and Moynihan 2021). From this perspective, expertise is an important resource to be cultivated and must be protected from overt politicization (Gailmard and Patty 2013). By contrast, the approach implied by Schedule F and unitary executive theory is that the president, and the president alone, defines performance and has the right to manage personnel. Merit is demonstrated not just through individual skills, but also via loyalty to the leader’s agenda and perhaps to the leader himself. Job protection and Congressional prerogatives are an imposition, possibly an unconstitutional one, on the president’s powers.Cocooned within conservative legal circles, the unitary executive theory has largely avoided responding to some significant shortcomings. An obvious starting point is that it ignores a century
If Schedule F was an attempt to expand executive strength, it also revealed legislative weakness. As Congress fails to directly respond, there is little reason to believe that such an attempt to assert control of the bureaucracy will not happen again. As such, Congress has a clear institutional incentive to revisit civil service reform, finding ways to address valid criticisms of inflexibility in hiring and firing, but also ensure personnel processes are firewalled from partisan control. Congress should revisit its own approach to delegating management authority. In certain areas, Congress micromanages by, for example, providing specific guidance in appropriations language, or placing constraints on administrative data-sharing that would allow agencies to coordinate. At the same time, Congress has delegated extraordinary powers via Title V of the US Code to allow presidents to carve out personnel exceptions, leading to a balkanized personnel system that is impossible for Congress to oversee and manage, and which leaders like Trump can exploit.
You Should Be More Worried About Politicization of the Career Public Service
Blog that reviews what might happen if Schedule F was put in place, and points out that replacing career officials with appointees leads to more polarization in the public service
Key excerpts:
If you are concerned about attacks on US democracy, you should be worried about efforts to politicize the civil service. Any proposed changes to the federal public service should be evaluated in the context of current anti-democratic risks.
Researchers, most notably David Lewis of Vanderbilt University, have tried to systematically understand the effects of politicization. Their work shows that appointees are associated with lower federal government performance and less responsiveness to the public. There simply is no body of evidence that suggests that allowing partisans to fire career officials in highly politicized settings improves performance. Indeed, what evidence we have suggests the opposite.
Let’s go back to Russ Vought, who enthusiastically embraced Schedule F, and set a target of converting 88% of his career OMB staff to political appointee status. How did they respond? OMB employee engagement scores plummeted from 76% to 55% in the last year of the Trump administration, the lowest among all small agencies. The perception that OMB leadership was effective dropped from 45% (already low) to 30%. Again, this fits with rigorous studies that show that instability and politicization makes public service less attractive, leading to higher turnover of experienced civil servants, and giving public officials less reason to develop expertise.
Public officials with career protections are more likely to follow their oath to uphold the constitution, accept democratic values like transparency, and ensure that statutory goals are implemented. Public officials selected because of loyalty to a particular leader are less likely to do so. Bureaucrats can oppose, undermine or shine a light on the sort of legal and norm-based violations that come with a shift toward authoritarianism.
Again, we saw examples of this during the Trump administration. Most obviously, and disturbingly, military leaders saw a coup as a real enough possibility that they discussed it, with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff reportedly saying “You can't do this without the military. You can't do this without the CIA and the FBI…We're the guys with the guns.” While the military was preparing to resist a coup, some Trump appointees were trying to move it along, in ways that we are still learning about.
In less dramatic ways, career officials drew attention to a wide range of misdeeds during the Trump administration. Let’s go back to Trump’s first impeachment. Political appointees like Vought oversaw an illegal effort to withhold Congressional funding to Ukraine to gain political leverage. They offered a secret legal justification that once more drew on the unitary executive theory, holding that the President could break the law in cases when national security is at risk.
Career officials at OMB and the Department of Defense warned their political counterparts that withholding the funds was illegal, at odds with the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, and a Supreme Court decision, Train v. City of New York 1975. Some of these officials resigned in protest. Ultimately a career intelligence official used legal whistleblower channels to raise concerns with an Inspector General. Some career officials also broke Trump’s attempt to stonewall Congress.
After his first impeachment trial Trump did all he could to name, harass and punish those individuals. The Department of Defense finance official who had raised concerns saw her nomination to a senior position pulled. A White House military official who testified was removed from his position. The Inspector General who had informed Congress of the whistleblower complaint was fired. Schedule F powers would have allowed an unscrupulous President like Trump to more easily put proverbial heads on pikes as a warning to anyone who would resist his illegal actions.
Trump could have avoided impeachment by listening to his career officials. When he didn’t, they helped to reveal presidential wrongdoing to Congress and the public. By contrast, Trump loyalists enabled corrupt and illegal actions, covered it up, refused to answer Congressional questions, and then participated in exacting Trump’s revenge against those who actually kept their oath to the constitution.
Should Trump return, so too would the authoritarian pattern of using of state resources to reward or punish political opponents – holding back federal aid, providing material support to political campaigns, or encouraging legal investigations of political opponents. Schedule F would place the administrative state more firmly under his thumb, giving Trump would a smoother path toward competitive authoritarianism.
Trump Got Burned by a Major Mistake in His First Term. He Won’t Make It Again (Slate)
Trump ran out of time before he could implement Schedule F. Swann’s reporting reveals how far along plans are to use it in a new administration. As Trump’s governing ethos has become increasingly centered on personal loyalty and reversing democratic outcomes, Schedule F offers a key to an authoritarian regime.
Key excerpts:
There’s a reason authoritarians target the bureaucracy. Once they have it under their control, they are better able to stifle dissent and criticism, reward friends and punish enemies, using the levers of government to maintain power. In his first term, Donald Trump largely failed to take control of the administrative state, that sprawling web of agencies that keeps the federal government running. To be sure, he ignored scientists and punished bureaucrats. But Trump’s officials largely lacked the capacity to manage the institutions they were charged with leading.
Proponents of Schedule F presented it as a way of improving government performance by firing poor performers, and improving political responsiveness. Swann’s detailed reporting shows that the goal, instead, is a form of authoritarian control. This is reflected in a primary desire to take control of the national security and justice apparatus. Trump’s inability to capture these institutions stymied his coup attempt. If the top lawyers are Trump loyalists, the most outrageous power grabs and misdeeds will be declared legal, with the implicit backing of the military.
More politicized government workplaces result in lower employee capacity and performance. Swann’s reporting underlines that the types of candidates being sought for Trump World are loyalists first. Relevant experience, or a desire to work in the federal government for the long haul are viewed as a negative. Instead, the ideal candidate is someone who does not believe in government, who has a chip on his shoulder about the system. It would be a government of angry young men, who will not understand what they are doing and do not care.
Another basic qualification to enter Trump World is a willingness to accept attacks on American elections. According to Swann: “Trump has reduced his circle of advisers and expunged nearly every former aide who refused to embrace his view that the 2020 election was ‘stolen.’ ” The people who are being lined up to take control of government are distinguished by their comfort with anti-democratic actions. For example, Jeffery Clark, of Center for Renewing, was also one of the Justice Department officials willing to abet Trump’s coup.
Schedule F would burn down the civil service system. It would be a government of the lawless leading the incompetent. It would be easy to assume that Schedule F would be a return to the spoils system that characterized 19th century government, ushering in an era of incompetence and malfeasance. But the spoils system era was at least characterized by peaceful transitions of power. Everything happening now in Trump World is premised on the idea that such transitions are a mistake. Another abiding ethos of Trump World is that presidential power is absolute (see the unitary executive legal theory), and can be used to override laws. Efforts to hold the President accountable for the violation of law are what need to be punished.
So, what’s the solution? The executive order is premised on power Congress has delegated to the presidency. It could take it back, or at least reiterate basic protections to career officials. Democrats in the House of Representatives added an amendment to a must-pass Defense appropriations bill, but Republicans are planning to block it in the Senate.
Trump’s embrace of anti-government sentiment is his key to authoritarianism. Thus, Republicans fearful of government power are ready to do away with basic protections against government power. It is quite possible that any populist Republican would exploit Schedule F. It’s not just Trump.