Conservative-backed group creates list of federal workers it suspects may oppose Trump’s plans – NBC10 Philadelphia

From his home office in small-town Kentucky, a veteran political operative is quietly investigating dozens of federal employees suspected of hostility to Republican Donald Trump’s policies, part of broader conservative preparations for a new White House.

Tom Jones and his American Accountability Foundation are investigating the background, social media posts and comments of key high-ranking government employees, starting with the Department of Homeland Security. They rely in part on tips from his network of conservative contacts, including even employees themselves. In a move that has some concerned, they are preparing to publish the results online.

Thanks to a $100,000 grant from the influential Heritage Foundation, the goal is to publish 100 names of government workers on a website this summer to showcase a potential new administration that could stand in the way of Trump’s second-term agenda – and that will be ripe for scrutiny. reclassifications, transfers or layoffs.

“We need to understand who these people are and what they are doing,” said Jones, a former aide to Republican senators on Capitol Hill.

The concept of compiling and making public a list of government employees shows how far Trump’s allies are willing to go to ensure that nothing or no one blocks his plans in a potential second term. Jones’ Sovereignty 2025 Project comes as his own Heritage 2025 Project lays the groundwork for policies, proposals and staff ready on day one of a possible new White House.

The effort, which focuses on top career government officials who are not appointed within the political structure, has baffled democracy experts and shocked the civil service community, drawing comparisons to McCarthyism’s mid-century “Red Scare.”

Jacqueline Simon, policy director at the American Federation of Government Employees, said the language being thrown around – in a statement from the Heritage Foundation praising the group for rounding up “anti-American bad actors” – was “extremely shocking.”

AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley

Civil servants are often former military employees and all are required to take an oath under the Constitution to work for the federal government, not as a test of loyalty to a single president in the White House, she and others said.

“It appears their goal is to intimidate federal workers and spread fear,” said Simon, whose union is endorsing President Joe Biden for re-election.

Trump, convicted of a crime in a secret money case and the subject of a four-count federal indictment accusing him of working to overturn the 2020 election, will face a likely rematch with Biden this fall, far-right conservatives have vowed to strike back what they call the deep state bureaucracy.

The Trump campaign has repeatedly said that outside groups do not speak on behalf of the former president, who sets his own policy priorities.

Conservatives believe the federal workforce has overstepped its role and become a power center that can direct or thwart the president’s agenda. Particularly during the Trump administration, government officials came under attack from both the White House and Republicans on Capitol Hill, as his own cabinet often raised objections to some of the former president’s more peculiar and even illegal proposals.

While Jones’ group will not necessarily recommend firing or reassigning any of the federal employees it mentions, his work is consistent with the 2025 Heritage Project’s long-range plan for a conservative administration.

The Heritage 2025 Project proposes reviving Trump’s “Schedule F” policy, which would reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers as political appointees, which could enable mass layoffs — although the Biden administration’s new rules are intended to make that more difficult. The Heritage Project aims to recruit and train the next generation to come to Washington to fill government positions.

In announcing the $100,000 “Innovation Award” last month, Heritage said it would support the American Accountability Foundation’s “investigative research, detailed reporting and educational efforts to alert Congress, the conservative administration and the American people to the presence of anti-American bad actors they invaded the administrative state and ensured that appropriate action was taken.”

Heritage President Kevin Roberts said in a statement that the “weaponization of the federal government” was only possible because of a “deep state of entrenched leftist bureaucrats.” He said he was proud to support the work of the American Accountability Foundation staff “in their fight to hold our government accountable and rid it of bad actors.”

The federal government employs approximately 2.2 million people. That includes people in the Washington, D.C., area, but also workers whom unions say many Americans know as friends or neighbors in communities across the country.

About 4,000 cabinet positions are considered political appointments that routinely change from one presidential administration to the next, but most are professionals – from landscape architects at Veterans Administration cemeteries to economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The public list-making has some associations with the era of Joseph McCarthy, the former senator who conducted grueling interrogations of suspected communist sympathizers during the Cold War, orchestrated by a top staffer, Roy Cohn, who later became a confidante of the younger Trump.

Skye Perryman, CEO of the group Democracy Forward, said it was all deeply disturbing and a reminder of “the darker sides of American history.”

“This is part of an overall, very disturbing and worrying trend,” she said.

Publicly naming government employees is an “intimidation tactic designed to cool the work of these officials,” she said, and is part of a broader “retaliation program” being implemented in this election.

“They seek to undermine our democracy, they seek to undermine the way our government works for the people,” she said.

Jones, sitting at his desk overlooking the rickhouses storing barrels in Bardstown’s “Bourbon Capitol,” scoffed at comparisons to McCarthyism as “nonsense.”

He is a former employee of former Senator Jim DeMint, a conservative Republican from South Carolina who later headed Heritage and now heads the Conservative Policy Institute, which has a mailing address at the American Accountability Foundation. Jones also worked for Sen. Ron Johnson, D-Wis., and conducted opposition research for Sen. Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential bid.

Jones’ team of six investigators works remotely across the country, analyzing information on federal employees from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State and other agencies dealing with immigration and border issues.

They are focusing on the highest levels of civil servants – so-called GS-13, GS-14 and GS-15 workers and those in senior management positions who could thwart Trump’s plans for tighter borders and more deportations.

“I think it’s important for the next administration to understand who these people are,” he said.

He rejected the risk that publicly publishing the names, salary information and other details of federal workers who have some level of privacy, or the idea that his group’s work could threaten workers’ livelihoods.

“You can’t make policy and then say, ‘Hey, don’t look at me,’” he said.

He admits that part of the job is often “gut checking” or “instinct” that might lead federal employees to suspect they are trying to block a conservative agenda.

“We wonder, ‘Are there the wrong people on the bus right now, you know, openly hostile to the effort to secure the southern border?'”

His own group came under scrutiny when it first interviewed Biden’s nominees.

Biden repealed Trump’s Schedule F executive order in January 2021, but a 2022 Government Accountability Office report shows agencies believe a future administration could reinstate it.

The Biden administration has since issued a new rule that will make it harder to fire workers. The new administration could order the Office of Personnel Management to repeal the new regulation, but that process would be time-consuming and open to legal challenges.