If you had a doubt about which side the Deep State is on this latest move by Joe Biden should make it clear the Deep State and the Democratic Party are one and the same.
New regulations coming out of the government’s Democrat-run chief human resources agency, the Office of Personnel Management, will bar career civil servants from being reclassified as political appointees or as other at-will workers – who are more easily dismissed from their jobs.
The move comes in response to so-called “Schedule F”, an executive order Trump issued in 2020 that sought to allow for reclassifying tens of thousands of the 2.2m federal employees and thus make it easier to dismiss underperforming or insubordinate federal workers.
Biden nullified Schedule F upon taking office. But if Trump were to win the election for the Republicans and revive it during a second administration, he could dramatically increase number of federal employees – about 4,000 – who are considered political appointees and typically change with each new president.
In a statement issued Thursday, and reported by the UK’s Guardian news site, Biden called the rule a “step toward combatting corruption and partisan interference to ensure civil servants are able to focus on the most important task at hand: delivering for the American people”.
The Biden administration’s new rule moves to counter a future Schedule F order by spelling out procedural requirements for reclassifying federal employees and clarifying that civil service protections accrued by employees can’t be taken away, regardless of job type. It also makes clear that policymaking classifications apply to noncareer, political appointments.
However, everyone in Washington recognizes the real reason is to protect Democrat influence in the permanent bureaucracy.
When Trump was elected in 2016, he and his team had no plan (and no concept of the inside the government opposition they would face) to “drain the Swamp.”
Now they do in the form of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s nearly 1,000-page playbook known as Project 2025.
That plan calls for vetting and potentially firing scores of federal workers and recruiting conservative replacements to wipe out what leading Republicans have long decried as the “Deep State” governmental bureaucracy that worked against Trump from the inside.
“Here's my plan to dismantle the deep state and reclaim our democracy from Washington corruption once and for all, and corruption it is,” former President Trump said in March of last year.
“First, I will immediately re-issue my 2020 executive order restoring the president's authority to remove rogue bureaucrats. And I will wield that power very aggressively. Second, we will clean out all the corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus, and there are plenty of them,” reported the UK’s Daily Mail.
Trump has long expressed a belief that a “resistance” inside the federal government hamstringed him as president. If he wins a second term in the White House, he is expected to try and fill government jobs with his own loyalists.
“Either the deep state destroys America, or we destroy the deep state,” Trump has often told supporters at his campaign rallies.
Danielle Wallace, writing for Fox News, reported House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., torched the Biden administration's final rule, arguing it insulates federal workers from accountability:
"OPM’s final rule is yet another example of the Biden Administration’s efforts to insulate the federal workforce from accountability," Comer said in a statement. "The federal workforce exists to serve the American people, yet many Americans have a deep and growing distrust of the federal bureaucracy. The Biden Administration’s rule will further undermine Americans’ confidence in their government since it allows poor performing federal workers and those who attempt to thwart the policies of a duly elected President to remain entrenched in the federal bureaucracy. We need more accountability for the unelected federal bureaucracy, not less."
Ms. Wallace reported Comer said with this rule, "the Biden Administration believes it is more important to protect the federal bureaucracy, rather than taking steps to increase the American people’s confidence in it. The House Oversight Committee will continue to conduct rigorous oversight of the federal workforce and will examine legislative solutions to make the unelected, unaccountable federal workforce more accountable to the American people."
Labor unions and other progressive groups - who are major Biden backers - pushed for the additional worker safeguards.
The new rule has been in the works for 18 months and is expected to go into effect in May.
The Congressional Review Act stipulates the text for a joint resolution of disapproval. Each CRA joint resolution of disapproval can be used only to invalidate one final rule in its entirety. “That Congress disapproves the rule submitted by the [agency] relating to [name of the rule], and such rule shall have no force or effect.”
The Capitol Switchboard is (202-224-3121), we urge CHQ readers and friends to call their Representative and Senators tell them you demand that they sponsor and vote in favor of a joint resolution of disapproval of the Democrats new “protect the Deep State” personnel rule.
Office of Personnel Management
civil servants reclassified as political appointees or
at-will workers
Joe Biden administration
Deep State
Schedule F Trump order
Biden cancels schedule F
federal bureaucracy reform
Project 2025 Heritage Foundation
OPM's final rule
Accountability
House Oversight Committee
James Comer
Public Employee Unions
Congressional Review Act