President-elect Donald Trump hasn’t even taken office yet, but Republicans have reportedly already begun to ease the federal government’s guard.
Several conservative groups are currently conducting a campaign to identify federal employees who are partisan or potentially resistant to implementing Trump’s agenda, according to one CNN Report. These groups include the Heritage Foundation Oversight Project and the American Accountability Foundation.
The organizations have flooded federal agencies with tens of thousands of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests seeking access to emails, personnel files, and other communications between government employees. The effort is part of a broader strategy to lay the groundwork for mass layoffs of civil servants under Trump’s 2020 Executive Order Schedule F, which was later revoked under President Joe Biden.
The measure would reclassify certain federal offices involved in policymaking, policy determination, or policy advocacy in a manner that would exempt them from typical public service protections. This would make it easier for the president to fire these people.
Mike Howell, executive director of the Heritage Foundation Oversight Project, told CNN that his organization “has made approximately 65,000 requests to federal agencies under the Freedom of Information Act.”
The report continued:
The Department of Transportation, for example, received about 1,600 FOIA requests in the first nine months of 2024, and about 1,075 came from three people, all associated with the Heritage Foundation Oversight Project, according to a CNN review of the agency’s FOIA logs.
Howell has asked those agencies to “uncover conspiracies aimed at undermining the president-elect’s expected purge by requesting emails containing ‘Trump’ and ‘force reductions.'”
The American Accountability Foundation recently released the names of 60 people at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) who it believes could try to obstruct the president-elect’s agenda, CNN reported:
The list includes senior employees who have donated to Democratic candidates or causes, previously worked for groups advocating for more liberal immigration policies, or posted on social media about their efforts to aid immigrants seeking refuge in the United States arrive after legal status.
The initiative also targets diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and those working in the federal government to promote them.
Predictably, this effort spooked the bureaucracy of several federal agencies, who called it a “potential weapon of intra-agency email.” Some have even taken measures to hide their political leanings:
The effort has alarmed agency officials and unions representing federal workers. A source at a union representing Environmental Protection Agency workers called the effort a potential weapon of internal agency emails. In response, the source said EPA staff are “publishing as little in writing as possible.”
The EPA employees union has filed its own requests for information seeking names of EPA employees who may be at risk. But she has received no response as the agency’s FOIA office has been inundated with requests from Trump allies.
This initiative suggests that conservatives are learning the lesson from Trump’s first term, which featured bureaucrats and officials who worked to obstruct his agenda. The move is likely to cause quite a stir on the airwaves and online, especially if mass layoffs begin after Trump takes office.
But perhaps it is a necessary step. One of the biggest problems with the size and reach of government is that it has allowed unelected bureaucrats to essentially govern by the force of law despite the wishes of the president and his team, a problem that Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch has raised , highlighted in his report Book“Overregulated: The Human Toll of Too Much Law.” He wrote:
Increasingly, these rules are being issued without effective presidential oversight. As Justice Neomi Rao, who once headed the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, explained: “A single bureaucrat can sometimes exercise authority beyond that of a member of Congress.” . . Regulations that do not meet the threshold can result in significant burdens [this Office’s] Review or even consideration by an agency head or other political official.”
The administrative state has essentially become another branch of government, wielding a level of power that the framers of the U.S. Constitution never intended. While abolishing the administrative state is a lofty and potentially insurmountable goal, this initiative could perhaps be a good start.
