Last day to weigh in on Trump's plan to politicize the civil service

 https://substack.com/app-link/post?publication_id=492324&post_id=165147313&utm_source=post-email-title&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=rovhk&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo0NjUxMDE4NCwicG9zdF9pZCI6MTY1MTQ3MzEzLCJpYXQiOjE3NDkyMDg1NjgsImV4cCI6MTc1MTgwMDU2OCwiaXNzIjoicHViLTQ5MjMyNCIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.NA27wdIueycIUro-ir_yrhAL9bwuztnQWKFvZeRMMRs

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(NB note - We have a chance to OPPOSE Trump's politicization of the Federal Civil Service.  I urge everyone to submit a comment OPPOSING the proposed Office of Personnel Management rule to politicize the public service and impose Trumpian loyalty tests on public servants.  Enter a comment here.  If you look at the comments already submitted, you will see that a call to MAGAts has gone out and they are submitting copies of the same Fascist supporting talking points.  Please take a minute to OPPOSE this new assault on the public service and the government that is supposed to work for US)

Trump has already shown us how he would use Schedule F powers Don Moynihan Jun 6 Take the time you would have spent complaining about politics online, and use it to write a comment opposing the proposed Office of Personnel Management rule to politicize public services. You can do it in 5 minutes. Deadline has been extended to midnight on June 7! Share Why should you do this? The proposed rule seeks to reinstate Schedule F (now called Schedule Polic/Career), Trump’s plan to institutionalize political control and loyalty tests for the career bureaucracy by turning 50,000 or more career civil servants into political appointees. It’s easy: Enter a comment here. No log in. Just click on the “submit a public comment” button. You can enter text, or upload a document. Federal comments really do matter. By law, they must be read by the administration, and substantive comments require a response. Failure to do so can see the rule tossed out by courts. It also creates a record of public opposition to the things being done to the public service. The volume of opposing comments matters, so writing something short and sweet is great. Two former federal employees (Michael Boyce and Abigail Haddad) created a live ticker that not just counts the comments but codes whether they are for or against Trump’s plan. What they tell you is that a lot of people care about this, and oppose the plan. Join them! You don’t need to read the rule in depth or be an expert. The proposed rule is bad and protecting nonpartisan civil servants is good. Start with with that. See more details below or take a look at the comments people have already posted for inspiration. My comment is here, and here are some previous posts on the topic. A comment from Professor Don Kettl can be found here. I would love for people to reply to this post with comments they submitted or really like. Here is an excerpt from my comment: The Early months of the Trump Administration show that the Policy/Career Schedule will be used for politicization The Civil Service Reform Act promises that federal employees will be “protected against arbitrary action, personal favoritism, or coercion for partisan political purposes.” The proposed policy suggests that the Trump administration will welcome principled disagreement that help to craft better policies. However, the early months of the second Trump administration make clear the Policy/Career Schedule will be used in ways that increase politicization while undermining the conditions of good administration. A series of abuses have occurred, and contrary to the promise of the proposed rule, OPM has not stepped in to resolve politicization. There are numerous and well-documented examples of career officials (or career officials asked to serve in acting positions) being punished by partisan political appointees when they raise practical or legal concerns about the proposed actions of the administration. Public officials have been routinely placed on administrative leave or feel compelled to resign in the face of demands to enable actions that a) violate their statutory mission, b) other laws, such as the Privacy Act. A couple of examples suffice. Career civil servants working as lawyers in the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division were removed from their position and reassigned to areas where they have no particular expertise (complaint adjudication). While change among political appointees in this unit is routine, career officials provide continuity across administrations. Officials were told to drop cases without justification, and were not given performance reasons for their reassignment. With the Policy/Career Schedule in place, they would be fired rather than reassigned, and their significant expertise and knowledge removed from government. A Department of Justice career civil servant was fired when she refused to provide a recommendation that a prominent celebrity supporter of the President should not be given his gun rights restored. She testified that she was told by political appointees that the President’s relationship with the celebrity should be sufficient to guide her recommendation. Her recommendation was not binding on the President, who could have ignored it. It therefore did not impede his policy goals. Nevertheless she was fired for not following normal processes in reviewing such cases. In the Social Security Administration, DOGE officials insisted there was widespread fraud, despite no compelling evidence. They forced changes into the system requiring extra checks that found only two instances of likely fraud among 110,000 cases evaluated, but slowed claims processing by 25%. Why did career employees not push back more forcefully against new administrative practices that they knew would worsen public services? The Washington Post reported that a Social Security officials said: “People lacked the fortitude to tell DOGE there was no fraud because they were afraid to lose their jobs. They knew there was no fraud.” Under the proposed policy, such officials would have even more reason to fear dismissal. At the Internal Revenue Service, officials have been put on leave or resigned when they objected to language stating that the firing of probationary employees was for performance reasons as fraudulent, since no performance assessments had taken place of the fired employees, and many fired had received positive evaluations. Other senior officials at IRS raised objections to violations of laws around the sharing of IRS data, and ultimately resigned rather than accept the legal risks that would follow from violations of the law by political appointees. The President has also fired members of the Senior Executive Service (SES) without cause, as is required in statute. For example, a Department of Justice lawyer working on immigration issues who said she had only received outstanding performance evaluations while working under different administrations was removed on January 23rd, with the only explanation being an email that invoked “Title II of the Constitution.” The removal of such SES employees for reasons unrelated to their actions or performance offers another good prediction for how the employees in the new schedule will be treated, since career SES employees also had their job protections removed by President Trump. Even in non-career positions, President Trump has fired officials without reference to their performance. For example, he immediately removed 17 Inspectors General, and more have been fired since then. No justification was offered for the removal for their position. Such positions play important roles in providing for conditions of good administration, by providing accountability and oversight into government ethical failures, waste and abuse. The removal of such officials undermines such values, and provides further evidence that personnel decisions made by the administration are not motivated by conditions of good administration. Similarly, the firing of Democratic appointees to bodies such as the Merit Systems Protection Board shows that the administration is seeking to politicize personnel processes. While members cannot, by statute, be removed except for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office” the Chair of the Board of the MPSB was removed without any claims of performance failure. The same outcome occurred for the head of the Office of Special Counsel, which provides another source where public employees who faced unfair personnel action can seek relief. Since the Board and the Office of Special Counsel were created by the CSRA to safeguard against unfair and politicized actions against career officials, the firing gives all the appearance of the Trump administration seeking to smooth the way for mass politicization of the bureaucracy while denying a realistic path to appeals. Regardless of how the architects of the Schedule Career/Policy proposal describe its purposes, the reality is that career officials are fearful that they will be put on leave or fired for providing factual information or to protect the achievement of their statutory goals. The proposed rule features numerous examples of poor performers, but the focus of the administration thus far has not been reducing poor performance but on removing officials either without reference to performance, based on false claims about performance, or for simply performing their duties. The straightforward effect of Schedule Career/Policy would be to provide a stronger basis for such fears, undermining the ability of career officials to maintain conditions of good administration. Trump is targeting liberals in government For more evidence on the ideological motivation driving the abuse of public employees, look at this analysis by Adam Bonica, which shows how DOGE cuts are being concentrated in agencies that are generally viewed as liberal The numbers tell the story: nine out of ten federal employees laid off by DOGE since March worked in agencies the civil service itself ranks as liberal-leaning. Meanwhile, every single proposed budget increase in the GOP spending bill goes to agencies rated as conservative-leaning, with the bulk going to the most conservative agencies. The Department of Defense—which DOGE initially promised to cut—is now slated for significant budget increases. Here is an excerpt of a comment from the center-right Niskanen Center detailing why managing through fear is simply bad management. Fear is a poor management strategy Fear of arbitrary dismissal stifles candor and undermines the intellectual integrity of government service delivery. In its 1874 report to President Ulysses S. Grant, as its own efforts were wound down by Congress, the first formal civil service commission recognized that: The practice of making appointments and removals in controlling reference to personal and partisan influence and spoils, directly and powerfully tended, in every grade of life, to discourage and overawe honest and manly thought and speech….the courage and fidelity that might, under a better system, have disclosed and removed great abuses were overawed and silenced. The report recounts how fearful civil servants were to go on the record to Congress about the goings on of their agencies for fear of reprisal, citing a Congressman who declared in 1868 that “[n]othing but the assurance of secrecy could procure us evidence of how the people were being plundered.” Modern research confirms those nineteenth‑century insights. For instance, business literature has developed a robust evidence base showing that the ability of employees to speak up without fear of retribution directly contributes to improved team and firm performance. At the same time, studies on the impact of fear on work performance found that “fear is negatively and significantly related to job performance” among other undesirable organizational and firm outcomes. Evidence from across disciplines suggests that decision-making processes improve when a variety of viewpoints–including political–are considered. Employee attitudes and engagement are likewise linked to performance outcomes across time, organizations, industries, and locations. Federal data echoes these findings; results from the (now‑suspended) Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey link employee empowerment and open dialogue to higher agency effectiveness. The Trump Administration has itself acknowledged this effect in a way when attempting to impose requirements for more ideological diversity at America’s universities. But, while it’s not clear that the Federal government can or should have any constitutional say in the intellectual life of academia, it should seek to create a robust discourse inside its own agencies and among its own employees. Hanging the threat of arbitrary dismissal over every career employee creates pressure that discourages dissenting opinions and degrades policy quality—precisely the outcome a high‑functioning civil service must avoid.