Never Underestimate the Power of Unfinished Business. Take Schedule F, for example. By Robert W Malone MD, MS (11/12/24)
This is a long article, but it brings up some important points about draining the swamp. We’ve tried to boil it down for you.
Dr. Malone opens with:
The fathomless bottom of the deep state.
The Senior Executive Service (SES) class of federal employees was created under President Carter (who also created the Department of Education) through the passage of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978.
The SES was established to “...ensure that the executive management of the Government of the United States is responsive to the needs, policies, and goals of the Nation and otherwise is of the highest quality.”
SES employees were supposed to ensure top performances in all the various agencies. That was the theory, but the reality is something entirely different…
SES members operate and oversee nearly every government activity in approximately 75 Federal agencies and serve in key positions just below the top Presidential appointees…
SES bosses enforce political orthodoxy and fidelity to the deep state… An Agency Head cannot terminate an SES employee unless the Commissioner issues a certificate stating that the termination is in the public interest. Even then, the termination is subject to litigation.
President Trump’s solution to rooting out SES employees during his drain-the-swamp efforts came as an executive order known as “Schedule F.” He signed this order in October 2020, just before leaving office, but Biden canceled it on January 22, 2021.
Schedule F would have allowed agencies to reclassify policy jobs and given senior managers greater flexibility in hiring candidates and firing employees. Hence, the SES employees would essentially have become “at will” employees who could be dismissed for any reason as long as the reason is not illegal.
President-elect Trump vowed to reinstate Schedule F when he retakes the White House. Unfortunately, the Biden administration enacted policies to make reinstatement difficult to impossible for Trump. A possible bright spot is that the Chevron Deference is no longer in force thanks to a recent Supreme Court decision, so federal agencies have less power to interpret laws.
It’s all So Messy!
Dr. Malone says:
The easiest way out of this quandary in the long term is for Congress to amend the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 to clarify the role of the SES employee and other employees within the federal government. This would be a permanent solution instead of a temporary Band-Aid.
