Among the flurry of executive orders on President Donald Trump’s very busy first day were those aimed at employees of the government over which he now presides. He froze hiring, forbade most remote work, and gave his staff the highest-level security clearance without the normal background checks required. But his most far reaching step was the resurrection of Schedule F, which he previously implemented in the final weeks of his first term. Now called Schedule Policy/Career, but instituted via reinstatement of the Schedule F order, the policy reverses long-standing norms around the professionalization of government employees, which began in 1883 with the Pendleton Act.
That legislation, prompted in part by the murder of President James Garfield by a man angry over being denied a diplomatic posting, recognized that the work of the federal government had become important as well as complicated and that having it staffed entirely by patronage positions was not in the national interest. The Pendleton Act established the process of hiring people for government jobs on the basis of merit, promoting them based on performance, and allowing them to spend a career in national service should they so desire.
Subsequent civil service laws, regulations, and orders continued to advance this principle as the country and federal government grew, and so while the Pendleton Act remains in place today, in practice, Schedule F weakened the protections implemented in its spirit, providing that anyone in a “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating position” could be fired for any reason without any meaningful recourse. It was estimated that this would increase the number of political appointees in government from 4,000 to perhaps 50,000, though given the loose definition of those covered it is impossible to say exactly.
One of President Joe Biden’s first acts was to rescind Schedule F, and one of Trump’s first executive orders was to reinstate it, without significant changes. In addition to the name of the personnel class it created changing from Schedule F to Schedule Policy/Career, the following language was added:
Employees in or applicants for Schedule Policy/Career positions are not required to personally or politically support the current President or the policies of the current administration. They are required to faithfully implement administration policies to the best of their ability, consistent with their constitutional oath and the vesting of executive authority solely in the President. Failure to do so is grounds for dismissal.
So, while government employees in positions of any authority are not being judged on how enthusiastic they are about the incumbent of the White House, they could be subject to termination without recourse if they are found to have failed to implement his policy.
But how can it be determined if the failure was the fault of the employee or a failure of the policy? Will officials in the U.S. embassy in Copenhagen be sacked because they were unable to convince Denmark to handover Greenland? And what happens to those who work on Panama when the U.S. doesn’t get the canal back? And who will get the blame when the rest of the world rejects American leadership across the board after it drops out of international efforts to deal with pandemics and climate change?
In my view, Trump no doubt had the State Department in mind when he was crafting Schedule Policy/Career. It would be hard to name a mid-level or senior position in Foggy Bottom that does not fit some part of its definition. And in my 28 years of State Department experience – including serving as U.S. ambassador to Mozambique and Peru – I saw plenty of career diplomats who had some reservations about a policy, but I never saw anyone attempt to undermine one. Foreign Service officers are well aware the president was elected, and they were not. So they do their best to implement whatever instructions they get from Washington. If they really don’t like a policy, they can either resign or look for a posting in another part of the world where they have no objections.
It is unclear that there is even a real need for Schedule Political/Career when it comes to State. The Department already has more political appointees than any other cabinet department despite being one of the smallest. And the Trump White House apparently required nearly everyone at the rank of Assistant Secretary and above to resign. Whether any of those who wish to stay in government service will be given a new assignment is not known and there is only so long they could hang around without one.
The house cleaning was not just limited to policy positions. The officials in charge of resources, personnel, and the flow of information were also all immediately changed. One way to exert total control over the bureaucracy is place a very tight rein on who gets allocated what when the budget, jobs, and information are distributed. But complete politicization of it will not make it more effective.
Changes in norms around a professionalized diplomatic service go beyond the schedule reclassification. Normally career diplomats make up 70 percent of America’s ambassadors, with the remaining posts filled with political appointees who often include donors or other political allies. During Trump’s first time in office, only 56 percent of ambassadors were career diplomats, a lower figure than for any president in at least the last half century.
It is the norm for ambassadors and high-ranking officials in the Department to offer their resignations when a new presidential term begins. While those of the political appointees are often accepted, those of career officials are not, in order to assure a smooth transition during the many months that it takes for the Senate to approve new appointees.
One reason for the continuation of senior staff across administrations is because it takes time to build the human capital required, and an experienced diplomatic corps is an essential national security asset. Diplomacy is not just attending cocktail parties and not paying parking tickets. It requires in-depth knowledge, language skills, and other attributes that enable the State Department to persuade foreign leaders that what the United States wants them to do is in their interests as well as America’s.
The hard power of the military can quickly be overstretched and overutilized. The soft power of persuasion coming from effective diplomacy is therefore essential. Gutting the State Department and replacing loyal and hardworking people with those selected only for their ideology removes the tools the United States must have to effectively deal with foreign policy problems in a complex world.
Editor’s note: This piece is part of the Collection: Just Security’s Coverage of the Trump Administration’s Executive Actions