WASHINGTON – Thousands of federal jobs in Maryland could be at risk under President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to reclassify scores of civil servants as political appointees starting on day one of his second term.
“I will shatter the Deep State, and restore government that is controlled by the People,” Trump said on his campaign’s website, citing corruption, poor performance and leaks as the reasons he wanted to institute changes.
There are more than 60 federal facilities in Maryland, including agencies that Trump either directly threatened on the campaign trail or slashed in his first term.
Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich signaled in a press conference Wednesday that if residents who work for the government lose jobs, the move could deal a blow to the local economy.
“The defunding of some federal agencies and the possible movement of other agencies out of the D.C. area brings a serious threat of reduced revenue from displaced federal employees,” Elrich said. “This is a very real threat.”
Retiring Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Maryland, said in a statement Friday that “Maryland’s federal employees ensure the successful operation of critical government programs and services that all Americans rely on.”
“Any attempt to reinstate Schedule F would threaten the job security, benefits and critical workplace protections for the thousands of dedicated nonpartisan civil servants who work hard every day on behalf of all our communities,” the congressman said.
More than 150,000 Marylanders worked in the federal government last year, representing nearly six percent of the state’s total workforce. After the District of Columbia, California and Virginia, Maryland ranks fourth in the nation for the largest number of federal employees.
“Federal employees are sworn to uphold the law and the Constitution, and they will continue to do their jobs regardless of who sits in the White House,” Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement Wednesday.
“But make no mistake: our union will not stand by and let any political leader – regardless of their political affiliation – run roughshod over the Constitution and our laws,” Kelley said. AFGE represents more than 800,000 federal and District of Columbia government workers.
Trump plans to root out what he has called “rogue bureaucrats” by culling swaths of federal employees in nonpolitical civil service roles, also known as the competitive service, who do not turn over with the White House. He could achieve this by reclassifying their posts as political appointments, which would empower his administration to terminate those employees at will.
This news may feel like déjà vu for federal employees. Trump made an effort late in his first term to make more federal employees subject to presidential appointments.
In an October 2020 executive order, Trump created a new class of federal employee called Schedule F, for “positions of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character not normally subject to change as a result of a Presidential transition.”
After Trump issued the order, Sarbanes and fellow Maryland Democratic Reps. Steny Hoyer, David Trone and Jamie Raskin, along with nine other members of Congress, sent a letter to the House Appropriations Committee warning that Schedule F “could precipitate an exodus from the federal government, leaving federal agencies without deep institutional knowledge, expertise, experience, and the ability to develop and implement long-term policy strategies.”
President Joe Biden revoked Trump’s order on his third day in office in 2021, saying in a statement that it “not only was unnecessary to the conditions of good administration, but also undermined the foundations of the civil service and its merit system principles.”
As Trump reiterated his call to “drain the swamp” on the campaign trail this year, the Biden administration took further steps to protect employees against the prospect of a second Trump term.
In April, the Office of Personnel Management issued a rule to further enshrine protections for career government employees, including a process to appeal involuntary transfers into political appointments.
In his second term, Trump can reverse this rule in as few as 60 days, following a period of public comment. He may also have a path to invalidate the current rule through the courts or congressional action.
“I think the most likely thing is that it would be put into effect and…then the real battles would begin,” said Donald Kettl, professor emeritus and former dean of the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy. He said that battles in court and influencing public opinion would be the only real recourses in pushing back against the executive order.
“This is the kind of thing that deserves an enormous amount of attention,” Kettl said. “It seems like kind of inside baseball nuts and bolts, but it turns out to be fundamental to almost everything else that the new administration is going to want.”
Sarbanes urged his congressional colleagues to draft legislation – similar to what he co-sponsored last year with Hoyer, Trone, Raskin, Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-Maryland, and others – “to strengthen protections for federal employees and take all measures necessary to prevent the politicization or undermining of the civil service. Our federal employees deserve stability and respect for their critical work.”
The reinstatement of Schedule F in 2025 could reclassify the jobs of up to 50,000 career officials, according to Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.
Those at most risk are employees of agencies like the Department of Education that Trump perceives as left-leaning, Moynihan wrote in a Nov. 7 Substack post.
Moynihan predicted that the White House could first strategically fire several thousand newly classified Schedule F employees to intimidate the remaining workers into submission, a strategy he called “heads on pikes.”
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