Donald Trump’s administration in the first two weeks offered a dizzying series of steps to redesign the federal employee.
On the first day of his second, not consecutive term as US President, Trump signed an executive regulation that would enable his administration to shoot tens of thousands of career officers.
The order known as Annex F would possibly enable Trump to fill these positions with hand -picked loyalists. He took a similar step too late in his first presidency, but successor Joe Biden signed his own executive order to lift these plans.
Then, at the beginning of this week, in an email with the topic of “fork in the street”, civil employees were offered a “postponement and national security positions and the employees of the US post services.
The employees received until February 6 to answer the program, which made them paid in September.
“At this point, we cannot give you full security in relation to the certainty of your position or agency. However, if your position is eliminated, you will be treated with dignity,” says the e -mail.
Many federal workers are represented by unions and have considerable employment protection, and Some quickly advised their ranks not to accept the offer.
Here is a quick look at the history and features of the US federal employees:
From a weapon to the blow of a pen
President Andrew Jackson, who admired Trump, was a passionate practitioner in the 1830s who settled the federal government in the workplace with loyalists and supporters of the Democratic Party. This so-called prey system in “The Victor Go the Beute”-had flourished for decades.
President James Garfield, who was elected in 1880, had proposed some reforms of this system, while others mined within his Republican party. But like back then, the White House and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were flooded by job seekers in the first few weeks of job seekers – and people even appeared personally to say their employment procedure.
One of them was Charles Guiteau, a tailor -made and impoverished eccentric who had made it a habit to imagine the civil servants at previous party events. He asked the new administration with inquiries about a diplomatic role of Plum overseas, either in Austria and France.
Garfield is said to have written “unprecedented boldness and insolence” Fate of the Republic: A story of madness, medicine and murder of a president From Candice Millard.
Guiteau pursued Garfield for a Baltimore train station and shot him in July 1881, the President died of many -debating medical complications for weeks.
The successor to Garfield, Chester Arthur, signed the Pendleton Act in 1883, named after Ohio Senator George Pendleton, who presented the bill. Legislation anchored the protection against arbitrary discharge and solved a step towards a meritocratic setting system, including the entrance exams, for many positions in the public service.
Trump, the government and the 2025 project
During his first term, Trump scolded a “deep state”, which he as a disabled his agenda, especially in the Ministry of Justice, examined how the FBI examined contacts between his presidential campaign and Russian influence. Both he and the Republicans in the Congress also aimed to reduce the budget of the Internal Revenue Service.
After Trump was defeated by Joe Biden in 2020, the conservative Think-Tank The Heritage Foundation led a variety of conservative groups to contribute to ideas that she described as a project 2025. The project 2025 published in 2023 promised to “reduce the administrative state”.
The President of the Heritage Foundation Kevin Roberts told the New York Times Magazine, which he hoped to see if Trump was re -elected.
“People will lose their work. Hopefully their lives can still thrive,” he said. “Buildings are closed. Hopefully they can be implemented for the private industry.”
In the meantime, Russell, a co-author of Project 2025, has confronted Controversial hearing of the confirmation hearings For a potential return as director of the office for management and budget – a appointment that signals the intention of Trump to use the 2025 project as a blueprint, despite its attempts to take over the campaign path in order to distance itself from the plan. “
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Increase in federal employees
Pew Research, based on data from the Office for Human Resources Management and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, estimated that from March 2024, about 80 percent of federal employees work outside of Washington, DC and surrounding areas such as Maryland and Virginia.
California and Texas have the largest contingents of federal employees – around 278,000 people together – while solid red states such as Alabama, Mississippi and Montana have a considerable number of federal workers in terms of their population. In addition, an estimated 30,000 federal employees work abroad.
With regard to the wide range of federal departments of transport, energy, health and interior, which monitors the US national parks, there are any number of professions within the government. For example, the PEW were evaluated from the available data: 2,500 welders, 580 cartographers, 43 zoologists and 21 bakers.
With regard to the total number of employees, there are estimated 2.3 million civil workers. In addition, more than 600,000 people work for the US mail service, an independent federal authority with half-autonomous status.
With regard to the department size, veteran matters employs around 500,000 employees, while there are around 220,000 in the Department of Homeland Security that only existed in 2003. The four branches of the military include approximately 760,000 civilian employees. The 1.3 million active service members are generally not considered a federal employee.
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Is the government super large?
While the numbers sound big, according to political scientist Don Moynihan, “the federal employee is the percentage of the total population on historical levial stands.”
“We have about the same number of federal employees that we had in the 1960s, although the government is now doing much more” wrote in November.
While the incremental growth of the number of federal employees between 2000 and 2024 was tracked as 550,000 additional employees, this is still shy shortly before the recession in the early nineties.
The US public sector is also relatively smaller than in countries such as Canada, Great Britain and France. According to the international work organization.
“A very, very bad way to go”
Among the industrialized countries, the United States is also an outlier in relation to its existing politicization. Moynihan wrote.
Around 4,000 positions in the government are considered political representatives who routinely change from one presidential administration to the next.
Political scientist David E. Lewis in the book 2010 The politics of the presidents: political control and bureaucratic performanceContrasted the political appointments of the United States – around 3,000 at that time – to France, Great Britain and Germany, where the comparable number was less than 200.
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Political scientist John Dilulio Jr., On a podcast Moderated by the former Reagan administrative officer William Kristol last year, said that if the goal is to rent as many apolitical or impartial staff as possible, there is a medium at the front of the process.
In addition, a more fertile path to reduce the inflation in the billions of dollars of government contracts to private providers can be found.
A reuse of Appendix F, said Dilulio, would be an “enemy takeover”, as can be seen in the private sector every time the government changes the political parties.
“There can be no long -term planning,” he said. “You will cultivate people who essentially just wait for the next administration to come in and turn everything away to walk away.”
Democrats in the congress and public unions questioned the legality of the resigned resignation, but whether this was successful could suggest in addition to the point in a statement by the American Federation of Government employees, Everett Kelley.
Kelley said it was “clear” that the goal of the Trump government is to make the federal government in a poisonous environment in which the employees cannot stay, even if they want “.
