When we look at the candidates for president this November, we shouldn’t look only at specific issues. If our democracy survives this political season, those issues will be democratically debated and any changes to our laws and direction will be made following the rules that were established by our founding fathers and enumerated in the US Constitution. We need to look beyond these immediate issues and look to the character of the individual who will set the tone for the executive branch of our government.
Our Constitution provides for a balance of power between the three branches of that government. It was wisely established that no one branch should hold all the power and that dividing that power would help ensure that we would never again be governed and dominated by a single individual. During the American Revolution, King George III represented the tyranny and arrogance of the existing European aristocracy.
Enter Donald John Trump. Among the utterances of this former president and current candidate have been: His consideration to shoot missiles into Mexico to fight drug cartels; Seizing ballot boxes in those states where he was losing; Shooting protestors in Washington, DC who were marching in demonstrations surrounding the shooting of George Floyd; dropping a nuclear bomb on hurricanes as they emerged off the coast of Africa to disrupt their formation; Demanding government workers sign an oath of loyalty to the president (not the Constitution) as a condition of employment; and an expansion of the Schedule F classification to include anyone he deems necessary for inclusion.
That last one was a bit cryptic but very important. President Trump issued Executive Order 13957 on October 21, 2020, which was designed to expand Schedule F classifications for all federal agencies. By this executive order, he would remove Civil Service protections from all who get so classified. This classification would then allow the president to hire and fire government officials at his sole discretion well beyond the originally intended policymakers in these government agencies. This list would include tens of thousands of classified positions.
Luckily Trump lost his reelection bid and this authoritarian takeover was never enacted. Trump has promised to reissue the order if elected. He would essentially control all agencies of government and would have the ability to appoint loyalists at all levels of government.
In mid-2022, Trump and his allies had identified 50,000 workers who would be fired by the president. An entity known as Project 2025, led by The Heritage Foundation (an activist conservative think-tank), has identified 20,000 potential Schedule F appointments.
While controversial, the original Schedule F classification had some logic. The proposed expansion would however go far beyond the original intent of covering policymakers and would now include office managers, human resource specialists, administrative assistants, cybersecurity specialists, etc. The overt purpose of a Schedule F expansion is partisan politicization of all government agencies based on political loyalty to the president and not the Constitution. Political appointments to many of these positions would seriously jeopardize their level of experience and expertise in exchange for absolute presidential control.
If Donald Trump had been reelected in 2020, his Schedule F takeover of our government would have begun on inauguration day in 2021. With the Biden win, that executive order was rescinded but all attempts to legislate restrictions on Schedule F expansion have been thwarted by Republicans.
If Donald Trump becomes president on January 20, 2025, the Schedule F expansion will begin. With a conservative majority in the Supreme Court and three Trump loyalists among them, he would effectively control two-thirds of our government. While we survived the first Trump presidency, often through the career sacrifices of responsible Republicans, there would be no checks and balances on Trump 2.0. King George III would be envious.
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