Today’s notice: Shrinking the government is hard. Finding reasons to annex Canada may be easier. And, what one senator called “one of the most ignorant things I’ve ever heard.”
Big Government Will Likely Stay Big in the Age of DOGE
It seems like every day since the election, expectations rise for the Department of Government Efficiency (which, as a reminder, is not actually a department). Today, a look at what DOGE and Elon Musk are up against when it comes to creating a tiny government that is reliably MAGA. NOTUS’ Anna Kramer digs in on Schedule F, the federal employee classification created at the end of Donald Trump’s first term to make certain civil servants more like existing political appointees (i.e. easily fireable by a new administration).
Anna finds that Trump should be able to start reclassifying workers within about six months of taking office, which would mean some of the civil servants seen as insufficiently loyal could be fired before the year is up. That’s a huge deal to good government experts, who warn that loyalty tests will remove experience and expertise from important jobs. It’s in theory also a huge deal for DOGErs, who want to fire a lot of government workers.