Republicans have long complained that the federal government is filled with ideologically opposed bureaucrats who stand in the way of their policies and are too hard to fire. Presidents from both parties have kicked off their time in office with a hiring freeze, looking to put their own stamp on personnel strategies.
But President Trump is the first to ask federal job applicants to describe their allegiance to administration policy in an essay or to mandate training for senior government officials on White House executive orders, experts said. Senior agency officials, who are often political appointees, are to be directly involved in the hiring process, which has not previously been the case.
The guidelines, released last month, arrived at a time when the Trump administration was beginning the process of filling vacancies left by the vast and indiscriminate job cuts of the last four months.
The plan has long been to replace career civil service employees, whom Mr. Trump refers to as the “deep state,” with workers who are more in line with his agenda and have an allegiance to him. Another piece of that effort is already underway, converting some senior positions to “at will” employment so that they are easier to get rid of. Taken together with the new guidelines for traditionally nonpartisan hires, critics see a blueprint for politicizing the bureaucracy.
Virtually the entire federal bureaucracy is staffed by individuals who belong to a single political party and the New York Times thinks they are non-partisan.
