Here's When and How Trump's 'Heritage Project 2025' Will Release the Blacklist of Federal Employees

Former President Donald Trump is optimistic about winning a second term in office, and his team has already begun making plans. The preparations include a worrisome new initiative— the blacklisting of federal employees who conservatives fear would try to obstruct the execution of Trump's initiatives. As per AP News, starting with the Department of Homeland Security, Tom Jones and his American Accountability Foundation are delving into the personal details, social media postings, and opinions of prominent, high-ranking federal officials. The objective is to upload 100 government employee identities on a website this summer with the help of a $100,000 grant from the Heritage Foundation.

“We need to understand who these people are and what they do,” Jones, a former Capitol Hill aide to Republican senators said. In light of the same, federal employees are alarmed with the possibility of their names being added to the controversial list. The American Federation of Government Employees' policy director, Jacqueline Simon, called the rhetoric being used 'shocking'. “It just seems as though their goal is to try to menace federal employees and sow fear,” Simon, a Democrat supporter said. Meanwhile, the Heritage Foundation praised the group for identifying "anti-American bad actors." 

The Trump Schedule F proposal, which would attempt to reclassify tens of thousands of federal employees as political appointees and potentially allow for mass terminations, is being revived by Heritage's Project 2025. As per AP News, the plan is to have the public infrastructure in place from the start so that up to 50,000 federal employees can be fired to seize, reorganize, and abolish the bureaucracy that Republicans despise as the "deep state." 

“We need to flood the zone with conservatives,” Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project and a former Trump administration official, explained. “This is a clarion call to come to Washington,” he said. “People need to lay down their tools, and step aside from their professional life and say, ‘This is my lifetime moment to serve.’” By firing federal employees they feel are impeding the president's agenda and replacing them with officials who share their views and are more eager to implement the new executive's style of governance, conservatives of the Trump era hope to destroy the "administrative state" from within. 

“The president Day One will be a wrecking ball for the administrative state,” Russ Vought, a former Trump administration official said. "Americans saw how deep state bureaucrats made every effort to obstruct Donald Trump's agenda during his presidency, and we must ensure that that never happens again to any future conservative president," Jones said in a statement sent to The Daily Mail. "For now we are looking at folks involved with immigration, mostly at DHS, but also in other agencies," the AAF president said. He added, "[W]e are looking at the Department of Homeland Security because it has a large number of rotten bureaucrats." "It frightens me," admitted Mary Guy, a University of Colorado Denver public administration professor. He cautioned that the proposal would reinstate the political spoils system.