People concerned with the federal workforce and government operations generally are wondering. If he returns to office, would former President Donald Trump bring back Schedule F. That was his plan to turn a chunk of the senior career civil service employees to essentially political appointees.  The Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with one long-time observer who’s worried, Washington attorney George Chuzi.

Interview transcript:

George Chuzi My concern that the Trump administration will reinitiate Schedule F is actually stated in black and white in Project 2025. Project 2025 identifies three, potentially four executive orders that the Trump administration issued concerning the civil service. One of them is what led to Schedule F. And Project 2025 says specific explicitly that the new administration, if it’s elected, will reintroduce that executive order and Schedule F.

Tom Temin But hasn’t the Trump campaign pretty much separated itself from Project 25? People always bring it up, but Trump himself has said he doesn’t want anything to do with it.

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George Chuzi Yes, he has said that. But it belies the effort that has gone into Project 2025, undertaken by numerous former officials of the Trump administration. And so I look at his denial with a certain grain of salt, if you would.

Tom Temin All right. Well, let’s presume, then, that Schedule F would come in if he is elected. It would put, well we don’t know how many people it would affect that are now federal career civil servants, but the number I’ve read is up to maybe 15,000 of them, roughly the size of the senior executive service. What’s your thought on what that would do to civil service, as we understand it?

George Chuzi Well, the Schedule F is aimed at GS-13 through 15 employees. And Schedule F has given the executive the authority to categorize those positions as policy making or policy evaluating, and therefore they should be more responsive to the political party that controls the executive. The federal civil service has been nonpartisan since the 1880s, and that was done for a reason. And that is prior to that at the change of administration, the entire federal civil service would go away, and the president would appoint everybody else, regardless of abilities, regardless of anything other than political affiliation. I think Schedule F threatens to erode the nonpartisan aspect of the federal civil service. And Project 2025 takes great pains to explain why a nonpartisan civil service is not in the best interest of the country. That is the fundamental belief of Project 2025. And that’s why I am concerned that if the Trump administration is returned to power, the federal civil service will become an arm of the executive rather than simply implementing Congress’ laws.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with George Chuzi. He’s a partner with Kalijarvi, Chuzi, Newman & Fitch of Washington, D.C. And that raises kind of an interesting dichotomy because, yes, the civil service is supposed to be independent politically, but yet it’s also there to carry out whatever the particular administration’s bias is. And I guess my philosophical question is, how do you reconcile those two notions? Because policy changes dramatically as we’ve seen more so in recent years probably than in the last postwar years. 30, 50, 60, 70s. So what does the civil service do when policy changes so rapidly? It has to change.

George Chuzi It’s an interesting question. But what’s really interesting is why this hasn’t arisen until now. The authority given to the executive by the Constitution is to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. What the Trump administration did is implement executive orders, which in many respects modified statutes, and ordered OPM to follow them. And for example, just as another example, there’s an executive order that Trump issued, which would greatly limit the power of federal labor unions. And Project 2025 says that federal labor unions have no role in the federal government. And Congress has a statute on labor management practices. And the executive order simply flies in the face of that. And the question for us is, it’s possible that somebody can sue the government to block some of these executive orders or schedules. But then we’re relying on the courts to do that. I think it’s the first line of defense for a political party that is trying to exceed its authority is in the nonpartisan civil service, which should be permitted to implement those that are reasonable, those policies that are reasonable, but push back when they are pushed too hard. And in fact, Congress has passed a statute and its 5 USC 2302, which allows employees to decline to implement orders that they reasonably believe are illegal.

Tom Temin Could the problem really be maybe stemming back to the 1930s when government became something by presidential fiat? I think there was a book written 50 years ago called The Imperial Presidency and it was talking about Nixon and Johnson in that era. And in fact, every president issues executive orders, extensive ones. Sometimes President Biden had a stack of 30 of them the first day in office that none of them are necessarily based in statutory or constitutional law. But that’s what the administration wants. And could it be that Trump is just issuing ones that people don’t like? But maybe the whole practice needs to be revisited in terms of that idea of the imperial presidency as opposed to the constitutional presidency.

George Chuzi Well, many of Biden’s executive orders on day one were rescinding the executive orders by Trump that we’re talking about. But the other thing is, we count because it’s a government of checks and balances. We if a president exceeds his authority, we count on either Congress or the judiciary to put a check on the president’s power. I think over the last four years, we’ve become more concerned both with the judiciary and with a congressional inaction to play its role in checking presidential power.

Tom Temin Yes, because I think I see what you’re saying, because I think the presidential power has been exercised to the detriment of a lot of orderly processes of government. Then if Trump comes in, let’s say let’s postulate and there is a Schedule F, what do you expect would happen at that point? Do you expect someone to challenge that legally?

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George Chuzi Yes. And Trump’s Justice Department will defend it. And it’s not clear to me what the outcome of that challenge will be. Congress has issued certain statutes governing the competitive civil service and the excepted civil service, and then political appointees. If Trump wants to change how GS-13 through 15 are chosen and what their authorities are going to be, I’m not sure that would be subject to a successful challenge.

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