When a new presidential administration takes office in the United States, there is a large turnover of employees in the Executive Branch of the Federal government. There are two categories of employee: the political appointees and the career civil servants. The political appointees come and go, while, of course, the career civil servants provide continuity and expertise.
People generally know that an incoming President selects the members of his or her Cabinet, and that each Cabinet Secretary is the head of a government department (and all of it’s employees). In addition to the Vice-president there are fifteen executive departments represented in the President’s Cabinet.
It is much less well-known that the Executive Branch, in addition to the Cabinet, includes around 4,000 positions appointed by the president. About 1,200 of those require confirmation by the Senate.
Appointees
So the first major hurdle Joe Biden will have in setting up his new government is getting his preferred Cabinet (and other political appointment hires) past Mitch McConnell, the infamous obstructionist. If McConnell ends up the majority leader after the Georgia Senate run off elections, we can expect him to slow down the efforts of our new President to staff his new administration.
Thankfully, all of Donald Trump’s Cabinet, from the evil (Bill Barr, Mike Pompeo), to the incompetent (Betsy Devos, Ben Carson), to the opportunists (Steve Mnuchin, Mike Pence) will be gone. All of Trump’s political appointees throughout the Executive Branch should also be leaving government employment with the outgoing president.
There is, however, a trick sometimes used to keep some of these people in the government. It is called “burrowing in.” This means that some political appointees convert to career civil service status. All such conversions are supposed to be reviewed and approved by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), but some are not. Besides, the head of the OPM is appointed by the President.
In October, Trump issued an Executive Order that politicizes the civil service by creating a new category of Federal employee. Employees reassigned to this job category will lose their job protections and be easier to fire. At the same time, this order makes it easier for political appointees to be moved into career positions so they will not have to leave when the new administration takes office.
The courts
The governmental branch that will have the most Trump holdovers is the Judicial Branch. The most obvious of these, of course, are the three Justices Trump has placed on the Supreme Court. They will do lasting damage for years to come. In addition, with Mitch McConnell’s help, Trump has appointed almost a quarter of all active federal judges in the United States.
President Biden will not be able to do anything about these judges. They have a lifetime appointment unless impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. There ARE options to deal with the Supreme Court, but they are politically difficult.
One good idea is to set term limits for the Supreme Court. A Bill to do this has already been introduced in the House of Representatives. Another idea would be to increase the number of justices on the court (the so-called “court packing”). I don’t expect President Biden or the Congress to seriously advance either of these ideas.
Drain the swamp
The shift from competence to cronyism is widespread across the government.
James Fallows
President Biden and his transition team will have the opportunity and the responsibility to reverse many of the misguided and damaging policies imposed by Donald Trump. But, for the long-term health of our country, it is important that they also focus on removing as many Trump loyalists from the government as possible.
These people not only supported a racist, authoritarian, misogynistic, narcissist and his policies, but, in most cases, they were hired for their loyalty to Trump rather than for their competence. We, the people, deserve higher quality employees.
Sources: “Denazification,” Wikipedia.
Donald J. Mihalek, “How the presidential transition between Biden and Trump will work,” ABC News, November 9, 2020.
Eric Katz, “Biden’s Transition Has Focused on Civil Service Issues as Familiar Faces Spearhead Efforts,” Government Executive, November 10, 2020.
Neil A. Levine, “Bridging the Gap Between Political Appointees and Civil Servants,” Government Executive, August 10, 2017.
Alex Tippett and Troy Cribb, “Political Appointee To Civil Servant: What the Public Should Know About “Burrowing In”,” Center for Presidential Transition, October 14, 2020.
Lisa Rein, “Trump moves to strip job protections from White House budget analysts as he races to transform civil service,” The Washington Post, November 27, 2020.
John Gramlich, “How Trump compares with other recent presidents in appointing federal judges,” Pew Research Center, July 15, 2020.
Gabe Roth, “Term Limits,” Fix The Court, September 29, 2020.
James Fallows, “How Biden Should Investigate Trump,” The Atlantic, December 9, 2020.
Chris Hayes (MSNBC): “Donald Trump and our government under his leadership explicitly pursued a strategy to spread the virus, to get more people sick. They took the side of Covid. They had the same aims as the virus. They were—as I said before—objectively pro-Covid.” Click here to watch the video.