OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
When he was first elected, then-President Donald Trump quickly discovered that several lawmakers in his own party weren’t really on board with his ‘America First’ agenda.
Despite the fact that many of them had long campaigned on, and pushed, policies such as repealing and replacing Obamacare and building a better border wall, a pared-down Obamacare repeal was sacked by the late Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Trump had to use unappropriated funds from the Pentagon’s budget to get what wall sections built that he could manage before his loss to President Joe Biden.
But if Trump runs again in 2024, as it appears he will, and wins, he will likely have a much more ‘agreeable’ Republican Congress to work for, and one of his top allies, according to a Friday report, will be Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio.
According to Axios:
Former President Trump’s top allies are preparing to radically reshape the federal government if he is re-elected, purging potentially thousands of civil servants and filling career posts with loyalists to him and his “America First” ideology, people involved in the discussions tell Axios.
The impact could go well beyond typical conservative targets such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Internal Revenue Service. Trump allies are working on plans that would potentially strip layers at the Justice Department — including the FBI, and reaching into national security, intelligence, the State Department and the Pentagon, sources close to the former president say.
According to the report, many of the reforms would take place under an executive order known as “Schedule F,” “developed and refined in secret over most of the second half of Trump’s term and launched 13 days before the 2020 election.”
The outlet conducted dozens of interviews over roughly three months with people close to Trump or who are familiar with the plan, which involves stacking scores of the most important federal agencies with mid-to-top level people who are loyal to the former president and his ‘America First’ agenda.
But in terms of Congress, Trump views Jordan as his “closest confidante,” according to Axios.
In the meantime, Business Insider reports:
House Republicans, on pace to win back control of the chamber in the 2022 midterms, are also readying a blitz of high-profile investigations targeting the Biden administration, including probes into President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, the January 6 Committee, and their Democratic colleagues.
Jordan, a leading defender of Trump during his first impeachment in late 2019, is poised to chair the powerful House Judiciary Committee and lead many of those investigations if Republicans retake the House in 2022.
Trump is also said to be a big fan of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a major ‘America First’ champion who was stripped of her committee assignments shortly after she was elected and took office for what many Republicans called a highly partisan decision by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Axios explains that the effort to reshape government institutions and change their culture, politically, is extensive, multi-layered, and ongoing.
“Well-funded groups are already developing lists of candidates selected often for their animus against the system — in line with Trump’s long-running obsession with draining ‘the swamp,'” the outlet reported. “This includes building extensive databases of people vetted as being committed to Trump and his agenda.”
“The preparations are far more advanced and ambitious than previously reported. What is happening now is an inversion of the slapdash and virtually non-existent infrastructure surrounding Trump ahead of his 2017 presidential transition,” the report continued.
“These groups are operating on multiple fronts: shaping policies, identifying top lieutenants, curating an alternative labor force of unprecedented scale, and preparing for legal challenges and defenses that might go before Trump-friendly judges, all the way to a 6-3 Supreme Court,” Axios added.
Trump has often been praised for his selection of constitutionalist jurists for federal courts, many of whom have delivered legal blows to the Biden administration’s attempts to impose its agenda in ways that critics say are often legally questionable.
Regarding Trump’s executive order, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” issued in October 2020, it was immediately rescinded by Biden. But it serves as a blueprint for reshaping and reforming the federal bureaucracy that Trump’s lieutenants are using to plan for his return, should he win the 2024 election.
“An initial estimate by the Trump official who came up with Schedule F found it could apply to as many as 50,000 federal workers — a fraction of a workforce of more than 2 million, but a segment with a profound role in shaping American life,” Axios reported, adding that legally, Trump could fire tens of thousands of federal employees who would have no legal recourse for appeal, though it would require a sizeable amount of time to replace them.
