WASHINGTON (AP) — Sitting in his home office in small-town Kentucky, a veteran political activist is quietly investigating dozens of federal employees he suspects of being hostile to Republican policies. Donald Trumpand align with broader efforts Conservative preparation For the new White House.
Tom Jones and his American Accountability Foundation are investigating the backgrounds, social media posts and comments of government officials. Department of Homeland SecurityThey are relying in part on information from conservative networks, including among Labour itself, and in a move that has unsettled some, they are preparing to publish their findings online.
With a $100,000 grant from an influential organization The Heritage FoundationThe goal is to post the names of 100 government officials on the website this summer, highlighting those who could pose obstacles to the new administration. Trump Administration’s Second Term Policies — and is now facing scrutiny. Reclassification, reassignment, or dismissal.
“We need to understand who these people are and what they’re doing,” said Jones, a former congressional aide to a Republican senator.
The concept of creating and publishing a list of government officials shows the lengths to which Trump’s allies will go to ensure that nothing can thwart his plans for a second term in office. Jones’ project, Sovereignty 2025, Heritage’s own project 2025 We are laying the groundwork, preparing policies, proposals and personnel for day one in the new White House.
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The effort, which focuses on non-appointed government officials within the political apparatus, has stunned democracy experts and shocked the civil service community, who have compared it to the McCarthyist “Red Scare” of the mid-20th century.
Jacqueline Simon, policy director for the American Federation of Federal Employees, said the Heritage Foundation’s release praised the group for taking down “anti-American thugs” but that its language was “deeply shocking.”
They said civil servants, many of whom are former military personnel, are all required to swear an oath to the Constitution to serve in the federal government and that the test is not a test of loyalty to any particular president in the White House.
“Their goal appears to be to intimidate and sow fear among federal employees,” said Simon, whose union supports the president. Joe Biden for Re-election.
Trump said: Convicted of a felony Arrested in hush money case Four Federal Indictments Blame him Working to overturn the results of the 2020 electionWith Trump facing an expected rematch with President Biden this fall, far-right conservatives have vowed to gut the so-called “deep state” bureaucracy.
The Trump campaign has repeatedly insisted that outside groups do not speak for the former president. Policy priorities.
Conservatives see federal officials as overstepping their role as the locus of power to advance or obstruct presidential policy. Under Trump in particular, they came under attack from both the White House and Republicans in Congress as his own cabinet often challenged some of the former president’s more outlandish or illegal proposals.
Jones’ group will not necessarily recommend firing or reassigning the federal employees it lists, but its work is aligned with the Heritage Foundation’s broader Project 2025 blueprint for a conservative government.
Heritage Project 2025 He proposes reinstating the Trump administration’s “Schedule F” policy, reclassifying tens of thousands of federal employees as political appointees and allowing for mass layoffs. Biden Administration’s New Rules They’re trying to make that harder: The Heritage Project is working to recruit and train a new generation to come to Washington and take government jobs.
Last month, the Heritage Foundation announced a $100,000 “Innovation Award” to support the American Accountability Foundation’s “investigative researchers, in-depth reports, and education efforts to alert Congress, conservative administrations, and the American people to the presence of anti-American villains lurking in the administrative state so that appropriate action can be taken.”
The Heritage Institute’s president, Kevin Roberts, said in a statement that the “weaponization of the federal government” has only been made possible by a “deep state of deeply left-wing bureaucrats.” He said the organization was proud to support the work of the American Accountability Foundation in the “fight to hold government accountable and remove bad actors.”
The federal government employs about 2.2 million people, including workers in the Washington, D.C., area, but also workers that many Americans know as friends and neighbors in communities across the country, according to unions.
About 4,000 positions in the government are considered political appointees that rotate regularly with each new presidential administration, but most are professional positions, from landscapers at the Veterans Administration cemeteries to economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
For some, the public listing evokes the days of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who conducted tough hearings of suspected communist sympathizers during the Cold War, led by Roy Cohn, a senior staffer who later became a confidant of the younger Trump.
Skye Perryman, CEO of the advocacy group Democracy Forward, said it was deeply disturbing and harkened back to “a dark part of American history.”
“This is part of an overall very concerning and alarming trend,” she said.
She said publishing the names of public servants was an “intimidation tactic aimed at chilling the work of public servants” and part of a broader “retaliation plot” underway in this election.
“They’re trying to undermine our democracy and the way our government works for the people,” she said.
Sitting at his desk overlooking a barrel warehouse in the “bourbon capital” of Bardstown, Jones dismissed the comparisons to McCarthyism as “nonsense.”
Jones is a former staffer for Sen. Jim DeMint, a conservative Republican from South Carolina who later led the Heritage Party and now heads the Conservative Policy Institute, where the American Accountability Foundation is located. Jones also worked for Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and was a candidate researcher for Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in the 2016 presidential election.
Jones and his team of six other researchers are working remotely across the country, sifting through information about employees at the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department and other government agencies that deal with immigration and border issues.
Their focus has been on the highest tier of the civil service, including so-called GS-13, GS-14 and GS-15 employees, as well as senior management who could pose obstacles to President Trump’s plans to tighten the border and increase deportations.
“I think it’s important for the next administration to understand who these people are,” he said.
He rejected the risks associated with publishing the names, salary information and other details of federal employees, who are entitled to some degree of privacy, and the idea that the group’s activities could endanger the lives of employees.
“You can’t make a policy and then say, ‘Hey, don’t scrutinize me,'” he said.
He acknowledges that part of the job often involves a “gut feeling” or “instinct” about federal officials he suspects of trying to block conservative policies.
“We’re looking at whether there are people on the bus right now who are the wrong kind of people who are openly hostile to efforts to secure the southern border.”
His own group came under scrutiny when it first investigated Biden’s nominees.
Biden repealed Trump’s Schedule F executive order in January 2021, but a 2022 Government Accountability Office report found that agencies believe the order could be reinstated by a future administration.
Since then, the Biden administration New regulations were issued That would make it harder to fire employees. The new administration could direct the Office of Personnel Management to repeal the new regulations, but that would be a lengthy process that could involve litigation.
