The meticulous, ruthless preparations for a second Trump term

livemint.com:

Joe Biden when he became president. It reflects a view that the federal bureaucracy, whatever its size, should not have any entrenched authority. For the first century of its existence, civil servants were appointed to jobs by the government of the day based on an algorithm of personal contacts and favours owed known as the spoils system.

Then in 1881 a deranged office-seeker assassinated the president, spurring the passage of the Pendleton Act, which created a class of professional bureaucrats who stayed in their posts even as the presidency changed hands. Since the 1940s, when Franklin Roosevelt was expanding the government, it has been hard to fire federal bureaucrats, AFPI complains. Many political appointees in the Trump administration believe that a minority of civil servants used their protected status to thwart or undermine the president’s wishes.

James Sherk, a policy adviser in the Trump White House who is now at AFPI, cites two cases on which lawyers in various government departments reportedly refused to work: one against Yale University for allegedly discriminating against Asian-Americans, and one aimed at protecting nurses from having to perform abortions. Schedule F would empower Mr Trump’s appointees to remove perceived obstructionists at will. “Schedule F is now, I think, Republican doctrine," says Russell Vought, who ran the Office of Management and Budget under Mr Trump.