Led by the long-established Heritage Foundation think tank and fueled by former Trump administration officials, the far-reaching effort is essentially a government-in-waiting for the former president's second term - or any candidate who aligns with their ideals and can defeat President Biden in 2024.
The goal is to avoid the pitfalls of Trump's first years in office, when the Republican president's team was ill-prepared, his Cabinet nominees had trouble winning Senate confirmation and policies were met with resistance - by lawmakers, government workers and even Trump's own appointees who refused to bend or break protocol, or in some cases violate laws, to achieve his goals.
If Trump wins a second term, the work from the Heritage coalition ensures the president will have the personnel to carry forward his unfinished White House business.
"The president Day One will be a wrecking ball for the administrative state," said Russ Vought, a former Trump administration official involved in the effort who is now president at the conservative Center for Renewing America.
Much of the new president's agenda would be accomplished by reinstating what's called Schedule F - a Trump-era executive order that would reclassify tens of thousands of the 2 million federal employees as essentially at-will workers who could more easily be fired.
Experts argue Schedule F would create chaos in the civil service, which was overhauled during President Jimmy Carter's administration in an attempt to ensure a professional workforce and end political bias dating from 19th century patronage.
A chapter written by Trump's former acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security calls for bolstering the number of political appointees, and redeploying office personnel with law enforcement ability into the field "To maximize law enforcement capacity." At the White House, the book suggests the new administration should "Reexamine" the tradition of providing work space for the press corps and ensure the White House counsel is "Deeply committed" to the president's agenda.
National president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said most federal workers live in the states and are your neighbors, family and friends.
While presidents typically rely on Congress to put policies into place, the Heritage project leans into what legal scholars refer to as a unitary view of executive power that suggests the president has broad authority to act alone.
Philip Wallach, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies the separation of powers and was not part of the Heritage project, said there's a certain amount of "Fantasizing" about the president's capabilities.
"Some of these visions, they do start to just bleed into some kind of authoritarian fantasies where the president won the election, so he's in charge, so everyone has to do what he says - and that's just not the system the government we live under," he said.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/aug/29/recruiting-is-underway-for-trump-like-wrecking-bal/
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