WASHINGTON (AP) — From his home office in a miniature Kentucky town, a veteran political operative is secretly investigating dozens of federal employees suspected of being hostile to Republican Donald Trump’s policies, an effort that is in keeping with conservatives’ broader preparations for a novel White House.
Tom Jones and his American Accountability Foundation are investigating the backgrounds, social media posts and comments of high-ranking government officials, starting at the Department of Homeland Security, relying in part on tips from his network of conservative contacts, including the officials themselves. In a move that has some worried, they are preparing to publish the findings online.
With a $100,000 grant from the influential Heritage Foundation, the names of 100 government employees will be published on a website this summer to show a possible novel administration who might stand in the way of Trump’s agenda for a second term – and who could face scrutiny, reclassification, transfer or dismissal.
“We need to understand who these people are and what they are doing,” said Jones, a former staffer for Republican senators in the Capitol.
The idea of compiling and publishing a list of government employees shows how far Trump’s allies are willing to go to ensure that nothing and no one blocks his plans for a possible second term. Jones’ Project Sovereignty 2025 comes as Heritage’s own Project 2025 is just laying the groundwork, with policies, proposals and personnel ready for a potential novel White House from day one.
This effort, which focuses on high-ranking government officials who are not constrained by appointments within the political structure, has baffled democracy experts and shocked civil servants, causing what they compare to the McCarthy-era “Red Scare” of the middle of the last century.
Jacqueline Simon, policy director at the American Federation of Government Employees, said the language used – the Heritage Foundation’s statement praised the group for tracking down “anti-American evildoers” – was “so shocking.”
Officials are often former military personnel and all must take an oath to the Constitution to work for the federal government, not a test of loyalty to any president in the White House, she and others said.
“It just seems like their goal is to threaten and spread fear among federal employees,” said Simon, whose union is supporting President Joe Biden’s re-election.
Trump was convicted of earnest crimes in a hush-money case and faces four federal charges alleging he helped overturn the 2020 election. He is likely to face a rematch with Biden this fall. Far-right conservatives have vowed to take a wrecking ball to what they call the “deep state” bureaucracy.
The Trump campaign has repeatedly stated that outside groups do not speak for the former president, who alone sets his policy priorities.
Conservatives believe that federal employees overstep their role and become a center of power that can advance or thwart a president’s agenda. During the Trump administration in particular, government officials came under attack from both the White House and Republicans on Capitol Hill, as his own Cabinet frequently objected to some of the former president’s more unusual or even illegal proposals.
While Jones’ group will not necessarily make recommendations to fire or transfer the federal employees listed, its work is consistent with Heritage’s sweeping blueprint for conservative government, “Project 2025.”
Heritage’s 2025 Project proposes reviving the Trump “Schedule F” policy, which would reclassify tens of thousands of federal employees as political appointees, which could allow mass layoffs — though a novel Biden administration rule is designed to make that more challenging. The Heritage Project is working to recruit and train a novel generation to come to Washington to fill government jobs.
In announcing the $100,000 Innovation Award last month, Heritage said it would support the American Accountability Foundation’s “investigative researchers, in-depth reporting and educational efforts to alert Congress, a conservative administration and the American people to the presence of anti-American evildoers entrenched in the administrative state and ensure that appropriate action is taken.”
Heritage President Kevin Roberts said in a statement that the “weaponization of the federal government” was only possible because “the state is possessed by entrenched left-wing bureaucrats.” He said he was proud to support the work of the American Accountability Foundation’s staff “in their fight to hold our government accountable and rid it of bad actors.”
The federal government employs about 2.2 million people, including people in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, but also workers who unions say many Americans know as friends or neighbors in communities across the country.
About 4,000 government jobs are considered political appointees, which move regularly from one presidency to the next, but most of them are professionals – from landscapers at the Veterans Administration’s cemeteries to economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The public list-making reminds some of the era of Joseph McCarthy, the former senator who conducted grueling hearings against suspected communist sympathizers during the Cold War. They were orchestrated by a top aide, Roy Cohn, who later became a confidant of the younger Trump.
Skye Perryman, executive director of the advocacy group Democracy Forward, said all this was deeply disturbing and reminiscent of “the darker parts of American history.”
“This is part of a broader, extremely worrying and alarming trend,” she said.
The public naming of government employees is an “intimidation tactic to suppress the work of these officials,” she said, and part of a broader “retaliatory agenda” underway in this election.
“They are trying to undermine our democracy, they are trying to undermine the way our government works for the people,” she said.
Jones, looking out from his desk at the warehouses where barrels are stored in the “bourbon capital” of Bardstown, scoffed at comparisons to the McCarthy era, calling them “nonsense.”
He was formerly a staffer for former Sen. Jim DeMint, the conservative South Carolina Republican who later ran Heritage and now runs the Conservative Policy Institute, where the American Accountability Foundation has a mailing address. Jones also worked for Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, and provided opposition research for Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential bid.
Jones’ team of six researchers is deployed across the country, studying information about federal employees at the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department and other agencies dealing with immigration and border issues.
Their focus is on the highest ranks of civil servants – the so-called GS-13, GS-14 and GS-15 employees and those in senior leadership positions who could hinder Trump’s plans for tighter borders and more deportations.
“I think it’s important for the next government to understand who these people are,” he said.
He dismissed the risks that might come with publicly releasing the names, salaries and other details of federal employees who enjoy a certain degree of privacy, and the idea that his group’s work could threaten the livelihoods of those employees.
“You can’t do politics and then say, ‘Hey, don’t question me,'” he said.
He acknowledges that his work is often based on a “gut feeling” or “instinct” about which federal employees are suspected of trying to block a conservative agenda.
“We ask ourselves, ‘Are the wrong people on the bus right now, who are openly hostile to efforts to secure the southern border?'”
His own group came under fire when it first reviewed Biden’s nominations.
Biden repealed Trump’s Schedule F executive order in January 2021, but a 2022 Government Accountability Office report found that agencies believed it could be reinstated by a future administration.
Since then, the Biden administration has enacted a novel rule that would make it harder to fire workers. A novel administration could order the Office of Personnel Management to reverse the novel rule, but the process would take time and be subject to legal challenge.
