Trump’s real plans for the deep state

There is a roughly 50 per cent chance that eight months from now Donald Trump will be carrying out a sweeping overhaul of the US civil service that could badly harm the republic. Which is why we ought to be paying more attention to the details of his agenda. Of these, reimposing Schedule F — Trump’s plan to make civil servants fireable in a political loyalty test — are among the most advanced. Serious minds are working on it. I wrote more generally about the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the 920-page document that lays out what a Trump administration would do, in an earlier Swamp Notes titled “The US right’s underestimated brain”.

By far the best description of Trump’s civil service plans comes from Deep State Radio Network’s David Rothkopf: “Trump is a kind of reverse neutron bomb: designed to destroy our institutions while leaving those people within it who are loyal to him still standing, or kneeling before him,” he wrote. The person who is doing the best policy work on this is Francis Fukuyama, the Stanford scholar and author of The Origins Of Political Order and Political Order and Political Decay. Fukuyama is best known for The End of History and the Last Man, but the titles above make him America’s most serious scholar of state and public administration. He was recently given a lifetime achievement award by the American Society for Public Administration.

Fukuyama’s greatest service to that field may yet be to come. He’s released a letter co-signed by more than a dozen civil service experts and scholars warning that Trump’s move would “dangerously undermine” the US government’s ability to function. I asked him to flesh out what he meant. Fukuyama says that the political complication is that the US civil service does badly need to be reformed. But Democrats are terrified of appearing to legitimise Trump’s Caesar-esque plans by conceding an inch on that subject. “There may be an opening for reform after November if Democrats suffer a near-death experience and Trump loses,” says Fukuyama.

Until then, however, Democrats are circling the wagons. Trump has had a chilling effect on many intra-left debates that should be happening and are not. When it comes to Schedule F, however, it is hard to blame the Biden campaign. Trump acolytes have said he could fire up to 50,000 federal employees who he perceived as lacking sufficient belief in his goals.

Fukuyama says the courts would be unlikely to block Trump’s plans. Many judges support the “unitary executive” theory that underlies Project 2025. Thus, if Trump wanted to appoint a political loyalist to the Internal Revenue Service who could audit meddlesome journalists or political opponents at will, this Supreme Court would not stand in his way.

Apply that thought experiment to any agency. Imagine, for example, what Trump could do with direct control of the Federal Trade Commission. “He could block mergers of unfavourable companies and waive acquisitions through for his golfing buddies,” says Fukuyama. Then apply it to the US military. In a second term, Trump would have plenty of willing lieutenants. Picture Fox News regular Colonel Douglas MacGregor at the Pentagon, or political adviser John McEntee as Trump’s chief of staff (for a glimpse of McEntee’s character I suggest Swampians watch this).

Yet, the US civil service is in dire need of modernisation. Only 4 per cent of the federal workforce is under the age of 30, says Fukuyama. “None of my students are remotely interested in joining public administration,” he says. The process involves six to nine months of security clearance resulting in a career that would pay roughly $180,000 if you reach the top. Then there is the fact that you are publicly berated as being part of the “administrative state”, or the “deep state”, or merely as a bureaucrat. Why opt for that veil of tears when there are so many cheerful alternatives?

As a result, we have a relatively hidebound US bureaucracy that forms part of what Fukuyama calls the “vetocracy” — with far greater leeway to block new projects than implement them. In this respect, the US federal bureaucracy is the mirror image of its Singaporean counterpart, which is well paid and world-renowned for its efficiency. Alas, Fukuyama does not see much prospect that America’s left will come round to public administrative reform before November. Democrats depend heavily on public sector unions, which would likely oppose such reforms, for their support. Roughly 40 per cent of delegates to recent Democratic presidential conventions are teachers, he points out.

The basis of any healthy democracy is a civil service that can do its job with a bare minimum of efficiency. “Our task is to reverse that Ronald Reagan saying: ‘the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help’,” says Fukuyama. “If Trump loses, there will be an opening. If he wins, we are in trouble.”

Max Stier, the president of the Partnership for Public Service, has kindly agreed to respond to this week’s note. My question to you Max is two-fold: How do you assess Schedule F; and what changes would most improve the current system? I was going to call Fukuyama’s plans Schedule FF after his initials but I figured that might be a bit confusing . . . 

Recommended reading

• My column this week takes aim at Joe Biden’s new tariffs on China: America pulls up the drawbridge. Though his tariffs are less draconian than Trump’s, they are in an electoral bidding war to see which party can deglobalise faster, I argue.

• Do also read Martin Wolf on the west’s ageing problem — increased longevity will bring profound social change.

• Talking of which, my colleagues Joe Leahy, Kai Waluszewski and Max Seddon have an important Big Read on Russia-China relations — an economic friendship that could rattle the world.

• The Guardian’s Atul Dev has an excellent article on India’s Amit Shah — Narendra’s Modi’s shadowy fixer and India’s home minister. “He likes scaring people”: How Modi’s right-hand man runs India.

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Max Stier responds

I 100 per cent agree that Francis Fukuyama is a genius and his work on the dangers of Schedule F is of fundamental importance.

Schedule F would be horrible for our country and our democracy. It would take a sledgehammer to the bedrock principle that our governmental institutions exist to serve the public interest, rather than the personal agendas of the officeholder of the day and return our country to the patronage system of the 19th century. We’d be turning back the clock to a time when officeholders ruled by political fiat and loyalty to the leader was the coin of the realm. And we’d end up with a government stripped of the expertise, experience and institutional knowledge needed to serve the American people effectively in a vastly more dangerous and fast-moving world.

Our government is nowhere near perfect, but we need to remodel rather than burn it down. Despite the many shortcomings, Americans still reap enormous benefits from our public institutions. Career civil servants are performing heroic work within an outdated and stultifying system. Spend just a little time reading about the incredible federal employees we honour through our Service to America Medals programme and you will see what I mean.

So, what might remodelling look like?

First, leaders across government — from Congress to political appointees to career executives — should be held accountable for the performance of federal agencies. This includes dealing with poor performers early and head-on, identifying mechanisms to ensure budgets are passed on time, prioritising investments in people and reducing leadership vacancies by fixing the broken Senate confirmation process.

Congress and agencies also need to help our government recruit and retain top talent by overhauling the federal hiring process and pay system, which is based on a 1949 law, while making better use of internships and other hiring mechanisms for recent college graduates.

Finally, agencies need to continually improve the ways they serve the public, upgrading their technology and use of data to reach new customers in the digital age.

Taken together, these and other solutions offer a path to the better-functioning government the public deserves. 

Max Stier is the president of the non-partisan, non-profit Partnership for Public Service, an organisation dedicated to building a better government and a stronger democracy