The struggle against the administrative state – the permanent professional bureaucracy that exercises awesome power without accountability to voters – is among the most formidable of our time. It does not exist within the Constitutional structure. Under the current system, even the most powerful elected officials find themselves unable to influence its policies and operations.
Every president and every Congress faces this problem. One solution was innovated in the last weeks of the Trump presidency: an executive order that would reclassify civil service employees as at-will employment insofar as their position involves policy making. The result was what has become known as the Schedule F order. It was promptly repealed on the day following Biden’s inauguration.
Jeffrey Tucker of Brownstone Institute speaks at length with James Sherk, who worked with the Trump White House on Schedule F and now with the Center for American Freedom of the America First Policy Institute. He is the author of the harrowing account of the Trump years, Tales from the Swamp. Jeffrey Tucker has written several pieces on Schedule F for Brownstone. Sherk here gives the backstory on the innovative idea and its prospects for the future.
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