**In the year prior** to November’s election, there were deep concerns among Donald Trump’s opponents concerning the agenda for attacking the “deep state” that was outlined in detail in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. These plans included resurrecting “[Schedule F](https://www.persuasion.community/p/trumps-most-radical-plan),” an executive order issued at the end of the first Trump administration that stripped virtually all bureaucrats of their civil service protections and placed them into an “at-will” category that would allow them to be fired without cause. During the presidential campaign, there was so much negative publicity about Project 2025 that Trump disavowed it and claimed he had never heard of the document.
Well, the new administration took office on January 20, and has now in effect revived Schedule F. What is remarkable is that the mainstream press has failed to pick up on this, or to inform the public of the likely consequences of this move. There was a lot of attention paid in the weeks after the election to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s so-called “[Department of Government Efficiency](https://www.persuasion.community/p/gunfight-in-doge-city)” (DOGE), which was to cut $2 trillion out of the $6 trillion federal budget and downsize the bureaucracy accordingly.
It’s true that DOGE is now acting like a hired gun. This weekend it was given access to the Treasury Department’s payment system after David Lebryk, the career official in charge of managing it, was forced out for refusing access. Musk claimed that the Treasury was making “illegal payments” to Lutheran charities and abetting corruption, which he and his minions will try to stop. Yet decisions on how to spend money are not made by the Treasury but by Congress, and corruption is controlled not there but by the individual line agencies. The Treasury is simply a cash register that disburses money to designated payees, not a watchdog of the public purse.
It should be noted that if Musk uses his access to actually stop payments, he will be violating the law. Only Congress can appropriate money, and it delegates authority to individual agencies with detailed spending plans. It is clear that Musk still does not have the slightest idea how the federal government works, and thinks that his crew have the legal power to sift through several trillion dollars of annual spending to catch corruption.
The real driver of change in how the government operates, however, is not Elon Musk but Russ Vought, the presumptive new director of the Office of Management and Budget, and the personnel initiatives that are coming directly from the White House. There has been a blizzard of executive orders very cleverly designed to skirt the legal challenges that faced the original Schedule F. One of these effectively[ resurrects](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-accountability-to-policy-influencing-positions-within-the-federal-workforce/) Schedule F and gives it a new name: “Schedule Policy/Career.” The order instructs Vought to “promptly recommend to the President which positions should be placed in Schedule Policy/Career,” though it is not yet clear who will be targeted.
The administration has focused its efforts on key leadership positions like the 8,000 or so members of the Senior Executive Service who constitute the experienced core of the permanent bureaucracy, as well as a number of officials with “for cause” protection like the head of the Internal Revenue Service, and 17 Inspectors General who were fired last month from different departments. “For cause” protection means that the official cannot be removed except under specific and severe conditions, like committing a crime or behaving corruptly. Now, many individuals have been moved in effect into Schedule F because they are [said to serve](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-accountability-for-career-senior-executives/) at the pleasure of the president.
Xeynon on
Firing the professional civil service and replacing them with incompetent ideological hacks will be incredibly destructive to the foundations of American prosperity. This is “fall of an empire” stuff.
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**In the year prior** to November’s election, there were deep concerns among Donald Trump’s opponents concerning the agenda for attacking the “deep state” that was outlined in detail in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. These plans included resurrecting “[Schedule F](https://www.persuasion.community/p/trumps-most-radical-plan),” an executive order issued at the end of the first Trump administration that stripped virtually all bureaucrats of their civil service protections and placed them into an “at-will” category that would allow them to be fired without cause. During the presidential campaign, there was so much negative publicity about Project 2025 that Trump disavowed it and claimed he had never heard of the document.
Well, the new administration took office on January 20, and has now in effect revived Schedule F. What is remarkable is that the mainstream press has failed to pick up on this, or to inform the public of the likely consequences of this move. There was a lot of attention paid in the weeks after the election to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s so-called “[Department of Government Efficiency](https://www.persuasion.community/p/gunfight-in-doge-city)” (DOGE), which was to cut $2 trillion out of the $6 trillion federal budget and downsize the bureaucracy accordingly.
It’s true that DOGE is now acting like a hired gun. This weekend it was given access to the Treasury Department’s payment system after David Lebryk, the career official in charge of managing it, was forced out for refusing access. Musk claimed that the Treasury was making “illegal payments” to Lutheran charities and abetting corruption, which he and his minions will try to stop. Yet decisions on how to spend money are not made by the Treasury but by Congress, and corruption is controlled not there but by the individual line agencies. The Treasury is simply a cash register that disburses money to designated payees, not a watchdog of the public purse.
It should be noted that if Musk uses his access to actually stop payments, he will be violating the law. Only Congress can appropriate money, and it delegates authority to individual agencies with detailed spending plans. It is clear that Musk still does not have the slightest idea how the federal government works, and thinks that his crew have the legal power to sift through several trillion dollars of annual spending to catch corruption.
The real driver of change in how the government operates, however, is not Elon Musk but Russ Vought, the presumptive new director of the Office of Management and Budget, and the personnel initiatives that are coming directly from the White House. There has been a blizzard of executive orders very cleverly designed to skirt the legal challenges that faced the original Schedule F. One of these effectively[ resurrects](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-accountability-to-policy-influencing-positions-within-the-federal-workforce/) Schedule F and gives it a new name: “Schedule Policy/Career.” The order instructs Vought to “promptly recommend to the President which positions should be placed in Schedule Policy/Career,” though it is not yet clear who will be targeted.
The administration has focused its efforts on key leadership positions like the 8,000 or so members of the Senior Executive Service who constitute the experienced core of the permanent bureaucracy, as well as a number of officials with “for cause” protection like the head of the Internal Revenue Service, and 17 Inspectors General who were fired last month from different departments. “For cause” protection means that the official cannot be removed except under specific and severe conditions, like committing a crime or behaving corruptly. Now, many individuals have been moved in effect into Schedule F because they are [said to serve](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-accountability-for-career-senior-executives/) at the pleasure of the president.
Firing the professional civil service and replacing them with incompetent ideological hacks will be incredibly destructive to the foundations of American prosperity. This is “fall of an empire” stuff.