There is so much news everyday it is very easy to miss stuff – which is basically the Trump administrations base strategy.
Well, in case you missed it, Trump signed an executive order on October 15 extending the federal hiring freeze and establishing hiring committees to fill vacancies with loyalists. If that second part sounds familiar, it’s because this is round two of the same policy.
The initial hiring freeze started in January after Trump took office. This new order continues it indefinitely while adding a vetting process for any exceptions. Federal agencies that want to hire must now submit requests to committees that will evaluate candidates for loyalty to the administration.
The stated goal is accountability in federal hiring. The actual goal is transforming the civil service into a partisan workforce.
Hiring freezes are not unusual during transitions or budget constraints. What makes this one different is the loyalty committee mechanism. Agencies can’t just hire qualified candidates for open positions. They need approval from political appointees who will assess whether candidates share the administration’s views.
Its basically Trump’s version of DEI – the rules are just different. This follows a July 7 presidential memo with a similar title about ensuring accountability in federal hiring. That memo established the framework, this executive order extends and reinforces it. Together, they create a system where political loyalty becomes a job requirement for positions that are supposed to be nonpartisan.
The federal civil service was designed to be professional and nonpartisan. The Pendleton Act of 1883 created a merit-based system to replace the old spoils system where government jobs were rewards for political supporters. This order reverses that.
Some positions should be political. Cabinet secretaries, agency heads, and senior advisers serve at the president’s pleasure and should align with his agenda. But the vast majority of federal workers – the people who process Social Security claims, inspect food safety, manage national parks, and conduct scientific research – are supposed to do their jobs regardless of who is president.
A hiring freeze plus loyalty vetting means those positions either stay vacant or get filled by people chosen for their politics rather than their qualifications. Neither outcome serves the public.
The practical effects are already visible. Agencies are short-staffed. The IRS can’t hire enough workers to process tax returns during a shutdown. The FDA has vacant inspector positions during a food safety crisis. The National Park Service is understaffed heading into peak visitation season. All of this was happening before the freeze extension.
When agencies do get permission to hire, they’ll face a new barrier: convincing a loyalty committee that their chosen candidate is sufficiently aligned with Trump administration priorities. For a park ranger or food inspector, what does that even mean? Are there Trump-approved methods for checking campground permits or testing produce for contamination?The real target is probably not park rangers. It’s scientists, analysts, lawyers, and policy experts at agencies the administration views as hostile: the EPA, Justice Department, State Department, and intelligence agencies. Those are the positions where political vetting will matter most.
For scientists at the EPA studying climate change, or lawyers at the Justice Department investigating civil rights violations, or analysts at the State Department tracking human rights abuses, political loyalty screening creates an obvious problem. Either they support the administration’s positions on these issues – in which case their analysis is compromised – or they don’t, in which case they don’t get hired.
This is how you hollow out institutional expertise. Qualified candidates who might disagree with administration policy won’t apply because they know they’ll be screened out. The ones who do apply and pass screening are either true believers or people willing to suppress their professional judgment. Neither group produces good analysis.
The order references a previous memo from July, suggesting this is part of a longer-term strategy to reshape federal employment. Each new order or memo adds another layer of political control over positions that were meant to be insulated from politics.
Congress has some oversight authority here, but Republican majorities in both chambers are unlikely to challenge the policy. Democrats can object, but they can’t stop it. Federal employee unions can sue, but courts have generally given presidents wide latitude over executive branch management.
The people this affects most are current federal workers watching their agencies shrink, and future federal workers who will face loyalty tests for jobs that used to be about competence. Everyone else will notice eventually, when the government they depend on stops functioning because expertise has been replaced by political alignment.
There’s a reason the civil service was supposed to be nonpartisan. Governments need people who know what they’re doing regardless of which party controls the White House. This executive order treats that principle as an obstacle to overcome rather than a feature to preserve.