President-elect Donald Trump has not even taken office yet, but Republicans have reportedly already started the effort to purge wokeness from the federal government.
Several conservative groups are currently in a campaign to identify federal employees who are partisan or possibly resistant to enacting Trump’s agenda, according to a 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 demanding access to emails, personnel records, and other communications between government employees. The effort is part of a comprehensive strategy to lay the groundwork for mass firings of civil servants under Trump’s Schedule F executive order issued in 2020, which was later revoked under President Joe Biden.
The measure would reclassify certain federal positions that are involved in policy-making, policy determining, or policy-advocating roles in a way that would exempt them from typical civil service protections. This would make it easier for the president to fire these individuals.
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The American Accountability Foundation recently published the names of 60 individuals in the Homeland Security Department (DHS) who they believe might try to hamper the president-elect’s agenda, CNN reported:
The list includes senior-level employees who donated to Democratic candidates or causes, previously worked for groups that advocate for more liberal immigration policies or posted on social media about their efforts to assist immigrants who arrived in the US seeking legal status.
The initiative also targets diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and those involved in promoting them in the federal government.
Predictably, this effort has frightened members of the bureaucracy in several federal agencies, who characterized it as “the potential weaponization of internal agency emails.” Some have even taken action to conceal their political leanings:…..
The administrative state has basically become another branch of government, wielding a level of power the Framers of the U.S. Constitution never intended. While doing away with the administrative state is a lofty and possibly insurmountable objective, perhaps this initiative might serve as a decent start.