Drain the Swamp? Not So Fast.

"Drain the swamp!" has been a traditional rallying cry of the MAGA movement. Supporters of Donald Trump have in recent years mused that during his first term, Trump should have been more aggressive in removing government employees who are members of the deep state.  

While a Trump presidency is by no means a lock, MAGA supporters are taking encouragement from a spate of recent polls and news stories that the tide is turning red. Of course, people have predicted a red wave before, with the anticipated result being little more than a ripple. 

It appears that the national tea leaves have made Washington insiders nervous that the Biden administration may not make it to another term. Many already believe that Biden can not successfully navigate a second turn in the Oval Office. But without a Democrat as president, there is no Democrat to succeed Biden should it finally become an unavoidable conclusion that he is not going to make it to the finish line.

To keep the bureaucracy in place and functioning even without a progressive president, the Biden-Harris administration has issued a new rule that will make it difficult for Trump to clean house during his second term and for conservatives to remake the federal government as some have claimed they would like to do. The rule will not make the process of firing civil service employees impossible, but it will make the process longer, according to Politico. 

A press release from the Office of Personnel Management said that the new rule will protect federal civil servants by:

• Clarifying that the status and civil service protections an employee has accrued cannot be taken away by an involuntary move from the competitive service to the excepted service, or from one excepted service schedule to another. Once a career civil servant earns protections, that employee retains them unless waived voluntarily.  
•  Clarifying that the phrase “confidential, policy determining, policymaking, or policy-advocating” positions—a term of art to describe positions that lack civil service protections—means noncareer, political appointments. This rule prevents that exception from being misapplied to career civil servants.  
•  Establishing procedural requirements for moving positions from the competitive service to the excepted service and within the excepted service. This change both creates transparency and establishes an appeals process for federal employees when any such movement is involuntary and characterized as stripping employees of their civil service protections.  

The release also recalls a decision by Biden to revoke a Trump executive order that would have moved employees to a new service schedule, "Schedule F." The release stated that the new designation "would have stripped career civil servants of their civil service protections that ensure that decisions to hire and fire are based on merit, not political considerations."   

In my news career, I met many federal employees who were closet conservatives. Most conservatives, when they hear the words "Drain the swamp!" do not envision forest rangers, scientists, clerks, or other government employees suddenly getting let go a week after Trump's second inauguration. They think of the high-level bureaucrats who benefit from power and position. Biden's new rule, which was set to be published in the Federal Register today, is likely designed to send a shiver down the spines of government workers, leaving them to believe that Orange Man equals Pink Slip.