I doubt many will know what "Schedule F" is or what it has to do with the recent FBI raid on Donald Trump's Florida residence at Mar-a-Lago. I don't even know if there's any connection there, so here goes nothing...
source: YouTube
I'm sure you're all aware by now that the FBI has searched the private Florida residence of Donald Trump. How could you have missed it? The right wing media has been ablaze with perplexed anger and fury at this unprecedented move. As far as I know, this is indeed the first time that the estate of a former president of the United States of America has been targeted with an unannounced raid; I'm as surprised by this as anyone else. I won't go too much into the reasons behind this court-approved search, as it's still to early to say anything definitive, but early suggestions are that it's connected to an investigation into whether Trump removed classified records and sensitive material from the White House and took them to Mar-a-Lago. If this is the case, he violated a requirement by the Presidential Records Act which says that US presidents must transfer all of their documents and emails to the National Archive.
I do want to comment briefly on the many angry reactions from the former US president and his allies. They repeat over and over again that this sort of thing only happens in lawless third world countries, and that it's a disgrace for America for it to happen there. I really don't understand that. I always thought it was the other way around; in lawless countries with authoritarian criminals at the helm this sort of thing doesn't happen, ever. It's a mark of a true and functional democracy that its leaders are not protected from criminal investigations and legislation. Not that we in the global north live in true functional democracies, mind you. And it's not as if our western governments aren't corrupt as well. But to cry foul when the swamp is drained strikes me as a tad hypocritical.
Now that Trump is in the spotlights once again, I'd like to take the opportunity to remind us all of how much of an authoritarian he really is. Remember that we're talking about the man who was caught on tape claiming that he could grab women by their private parts and get away with it. The man who claimed that "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" The president who failed to deliver on his promise to release his tax returns, or on any other substantial promise for that matter. This is someone who clearly thinks himself untouchable, standing above the law while leading the party of law and order. In the end though, he wasn't untouchable; he lost the 2020 general elections and the FBI has raided his house unannounced...
BREAKING: FBI RAIDS DONALD TRUMP'S HOME
And after Trump came Biden... Biden on January 22, 2021, only his third day in office, repealed one of Trump's executive orders by an executive order of his own. He repealed Executive Order 13957, Schedule F, which was created by Trump on October 21, 2020, at the very end of his term in office. What is Schedule F?
A Schedule F appointment was a job classification in the excepted service of the United States federal civil service that existed briefly at the end of the Trump administration during 2020–2021. It would have contained policy-related positions, removing their civil service protections and making them easy to fire. It was never fully implemented, and no one was appointed to it before it was repealed at the beginning of the Biden administration.
source: Wikipedia
Let me translate that for you; this Executive Order would have given the president the power to hire and fire civil servants almost at will, enabling him to build an army of civil servants who pass his personal loyalty-test. Just to make it clear, the many thousands of civil servants are the ones who make the federal government function, and serve under all political parties. Often this huge apparatus of civil servants are labeled "the bureaucracy," the unelected and unaccountable army of government officials who weigh down on the freedoms of regular citizens. In reality however, no government can function without them and they don't get replaced every time a new party occupies the White House, and there's good reasons for that. You see, there's a reason why authoritarians target the bureaucracy:
Once they have it under their control, they are better able to stifle dissent and criticism, reward friends and punish enemies, using the levers of government to maintain power.
source: Slate
A few days after Donald Trump proclaimed the Executive Order for Schedule F appointments, on October 26,2020, the chair of the Federal Salary Council, a lifelong Republican, resigned after having served for four decades under three Democratic and three Republican presidents. I'll quote the part of his resignation letter I found on Wikipedia:
On its surface, the president's Executive Order purports to serve a legitimate and laudable purpose...that is, to hold career Federal employees 'more accountable' for their performance. That is something that I have spent most of my professional life — almost four decades in Federal service (over 20 as a member of the Senior Executive Service) — trying to do. However, it is clear that its stated purpose notwithstanding, the Executive Order is nothing more than a smokescreen for what is clearly an attempt to require the political loyalty of those who advise the President, or failing that, to enable their removal with little if any due process... I simply cannot be part of an Administration that seeks...to replace apolitical expertise with political obeisance. Career Federal employees are legally and duty-bound to be nonpartisan; they take an oath to preserve and protect our Constitution and the rule of law...not to be loyal to a particular President or Administration.
source: Wikipedia
Civil servants would find themselves facing a choice between their oath to the Constitution (their oath to serve the public) and keeping their job. Things like clean air and safety regulations would stay on the books but be rendered meaningless in practice. Government data unfavorable to the administration could easily be suppressed or manipulated. And so on. Once this "bureaucracy" is under the control of an authoritarian like Trump, he'll truly have in his hands the levers of government, as the works of civil servants are in effect the moving parts of that government.
Trump missed his chance the first time around, but you can bet your bottom dollar that taking control of the bureaucracy will be among his highest priorities if given a second chance. And don't count on any other GOP candidate shying away from this opportunity...
Fascism Causing the Dysfunction of United States - Noam Chomsky & Richard Wolff
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