Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
Walter Shaub is the ethics maven ad the Project for Gobernment oversight (POGO). He writes a (roughly) weekly column on the subject, titled “The Bridge,” which comes out in a dedicated newsletter. Normally, when a column comes out in a newsletter, under the auspices of a group which operrates a website, there is somewhere on line one can find that column and link to it. This is not the case with The Bridge. I have tried in the past and failed, but I tried again anyway and actually got closer than I ever had – there is a place at POGO’s site which refers to The Bridge and claims to link to “the latest” (IIRC, “the latest” this week were from April and May.) The current one is not there. I am sharing it in full here, because, while ethics is always important, I found this one, with its history lesson, particularly compelling.
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IT’S ALL JUST A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY REPEATING ♫
Fans of authoritarianism are trotting out an old scam with renewed fervor. News reports indicate allies of former President Donald Trump have revived a plan to smash the federal civil service and take the nation back to the mid-19th century, when corruption flourished. Back then, hiring was based on political loyalty rather than loyalty to the Constitution and the laws of this land.
This practice of political patronage hiring was known as the “spoils system” because the spoils of political victory — in this case, federal jobs — went to the victor. In 1883, the government began a long, slow process of dismantling this primitive system and constructing a professional civil service. Now, 139 years later, only about 4,000 positions in the federal government are filled with political appointees, and the remaining 2.1 million are filled on the basis of merit, not political allegiance.
 President Chester Arthur signed into law the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act on Jan. 16, 1883 | National Archives |
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A Modern-Day Spoils System
A neo-spoils system would reverse this progress and make tens of thousands of federal employees (maybe eventually hundreds of thousands) subject to firing at will by the president. That would give us a federal workforce staffed by political actors loyal only to the president and not to the rule of law. It would transform the federal government into a powerful weapon for an authoritarian president seeking to shatter democracy. A whistleblower complaint concerning Trump appointees who helped conceal his extortion of Ukraine showed us what that looks like. This would be more of the same, but on an enormous scale.
Gone would be the due process protections for federal officials who refuse to carry out unlawful orders. Currently, most non-probationary civilian employees can appeal a firing or severe disciplinary action to an independent board or an arbitrator. These protections exist more for our benefit than for individual federal employees. They protect the public by making it harder for political appointees to fire whistleblowers or other employees who reject corrupt schemes.
Trump tried stripping due process rights for certain federal employees back in October 2020, but he couldn’t get his new system implemented before his term ended. Exploiting a statutory loophole, he issued an executive order creating a new category of federal employment, called “Schedule F,” which would have converted some career federal employees to at-will employees so he could fire anyone who resisted the sort of corruption that led to the January 6 insurrection.
A right-wing think tank, America First Policy Institute, issued a report last year laying out a strategy for executing the plan next time an authoritarian president is in the White House. And support for it is growing among politicians who appear to prefer the 19th century to the 21st.
 Title of America First Policy Institute “report” |
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The Last Line of Defense
It’s worth remembering that it was career federal employees who refused to take Trump to the Capitol to lead the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on Congress, exposed his extortion of Ukraine, refused to join him in encouraging the public to try a dangerous drug that wasn’t approved for COVID symptoms, and investigated his obstruction of justice. These patriots are obstacles to authoritarianism, which is probably why America First Policy Institute’s report says it aims to prevent a repeat of “bureaucratic resistance during the Trump Administration.”
Representative Gerry Connolly (D-VA) introduced an amendment to the House of Representatives’ version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to put limits on a president’s power to gut the civil service. The NDAA is the must-pass defense bill that makes it through Congress each year. But the Senate and the House have to work out any differences in the bills they pass, and it’s not guaranteed this language will make it into the final version of the NDAA that goes to the president for signature.
Along with Representative Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Connolly previously introduced a standalone House bill that, like his NDAA amendment, would place new limits on a president’s ability to strip due process rights for federal employees. On Tuesday, Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) and several cosponsors introduced an identical version of the Connolly bill in the Senate.
It is vital that Connolly’s amendment and, eventually, more comprehensive reforms are passed to shore up gaps in civil service protections because — make no mistake — the plan to crush the civil service is an effort in service of authoritarianism. As I’ve written before, federal workers are the last line of defense against a president who wants to weaponize the government against the American people in defiance of the rule of law. If you gut the protections for these public servants, you tear down a wall between us and tyranny. Congress must fight this battle now before it’s too late. |
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WHAT TO READ (AND LISTEN TO)
Want to dig deeper? Here’s my suggested reading list:
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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, I can hardly even imagine how many pearls would be clutched and how many fainting couches be in use if Republicans were to read this. How many shouts of “Fake News!” (when it’s neither new nor fake.) How many laws would be wrotten to prevent the teaching of this history in public schools (I’m pretty sure no public school is teaching this – I certainly don’t recall learning it in school.) If they ever get into power – God help us.
The Furies and I will be back.
