After Trump’s victory, US officials fear mass layoffs and ‘purges’

Experts estimate that tens of thousands of civil servants would fall into this new class. The measure would mean a drastic reduction in personnel. In the Office of Management and Budget alone, which manages the executive branch’s budget, 90% of the nearly 3,000 civil servants would fall under the new classification, according to the Washington Post.

A few days before the 2020 presidential election, Trump signed an executive order, but before it could take full effect, Joe Biden revised the plans as one of his first acts in office. In a second Trump administration, Schedule F will likely be implemented.

Immigration officials are under surveillance

Immigration officials in particular are a thorn in Donald Trump’s side. During the Republican’s first term in office, it quickly leaked to the media that Trump was separating asylum-seeking parents from their children. In another case, an official in charge of asylum applications criticized Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy as a violation of current immigration law. The official filed a whistleblower complaint because the government directive contradicted the asylum officers’ oath of office.

Such pushback is now prevented. A cleanup operation of sorts has already begun: In recent months, a group funded by the conservative Heritage Foundation has identified “left-wing” officials in the Department of Homeland Security who should be fired first.

Indicators of this included, for example, previous statements by officials on social networks or small donations to Democratic candidates. The founder of the American Accountability Foundation said in an interview that he was not working directly on behalf of Trump’s team, but hoped that they would use his preliminary work. Other red lines for him include officials publicly naming their pronouns or speaking out in favor of diversity. The group also sent emails to department employees urging them to report “hostile” colleagues.

The results of these searches—the “rogues,” so to speak—are listed on a website called “DHS Watchlist,” complete with a fictitious agency logo and the headline “America’s Most Subversive Immigration Bureaucrats.” There are currently 57 officers listed there, along with their names, photos, salaries, and personal financial information (all publicly available information in the United States). They are all accused of being “left-liberal fanatics” who torpedoed the security of America’s borders. Anyone can leave information about fraudulent “suspects” on the website.

An official told the NZZ that denunciations caused enormous uncertainty among officials. She will now clean up her social media profiles to remove anything that could indicate immigration-related activity.

Civil service unions were also outraged by the practice. The American Federation of Government Employees, for example, which includes 86,000 Department of Homeland Security officials, compared the practices to the McCarthy era – the period in the 1950s when Senator Joseph McCarthy accused officials of communism and had them spied on.

According to media reports, the Department of Homeland Security contacted the affected employees. “We condemn any attempts to threaten or intimidate our officers,” Homeland Security Director Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.

Trump wants to move the authorities to rural America

Other authorities are also already preparing for the change of power in Washington. An Environmental Protection Agency official said in an interview that in the final weeks of the Biden administration, officials are now focused on rewriting environmental regulations so that they cannot be undone.

In addition, Trump plans to move the headquarters of numerous ministries – and thus hundreds of thousands of civil servants – from Washington to other parts of the country in order to stimulate the regional economy. During Trump’s first term, for example, the headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management was moved to Grand Junction, Colorado.

Trump is also likely to put the state apparatus on a diet. His advisor Elon Musk – known for radical austerity measures at his companies Tesla and the social media platform X – proposed a “Committee on Government Efficiency” during the election campaign. This is expected to save two trillion dollars from the federal budget – more than the combined budgets of the departments of Defense, Education and Homeland Security. Trump has already announced that Musk will chair such a committee.

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