Trump Hiring Program: The Best Praise For The Administration Is Compulsory Praise
It was a couple of weeks ago when I was stupidly watching one cable news channel or another when I witnessed some GOP talking head say that Donald Trump likes to build a team of competing viewpoints that fight with one another as a way of producing the best results. I think it was Scott Jennings, but I can't be sure. You'll forgive me if I can't recall which husk of a person with their soul on loan said something so profoundly ignorant. After all, one of the overarching stories of this administration from the jump has been how Trump has surrounded himself not just at the top level with yes-men sycophants, but how that posture has translated further down the ranks of government.
But those stories had to do with either his own cabinet picks or the purge of federal employees that came at the hands, in part, of Elon Musk's DOGE program of chaos. We are all now watching the sun set on Trump's federal hiring freeze, which is due to expire on July 15th, a little over a month from now. And as federal hiring is set to to be opened up once more, we're getting a look into the administration's plans for its hiring practices, which includes both an initial and ongoing loyalty test of sorts in the form of compulsory praise for Trump and his executive orders.
De-emphasizing degree requirements and banning DEI initiatives-as well as any census tracking of gender, race, ethnicity, or religion to assess the composition of government-the plan requires every new hire to submit essays explaining which executive orders or policy initiatives they will help advance.
These essays must be limited to 200 words and cannot be generated by a chatbot, the guidance noted. While some applicants may point to policies enacted by prior presidents under their guidance, the president appears to be seeking to ensure that only Trump supporters are hired and that anyone who becomes disillusioned with Trump is weeded out over time. In addition to asking for a show of loyalty during the interview process, all federal workers will also be continuously vetted and must agree to submit to checks for post-appointment conduct that may impact their continued trustworthiness," the guidance noted, referencing required patriotism repeatedly.
There will be no loyalty, except loyalty to Donald Trump, it seems. Debasing government staff, or even prospective government staff, shall be the norm and without reprieve. And, yes, the Orwell references are flowing so freely about this administration so as to risk losing their impact, but there are simply times when no other reference will do.
Presidents are free to pick their Cabinet and direct reports, of course. And every president obviously wants to staff the government in such a way so as to implement his or (someday) her policy. But there's a reason the best governments and leaders don't surround themselves with pure yes-people. You lose all perspective when you do so. You miss the opportunity for competing thought. You get no challenge to policy or methods for implementing policy that might produce a better result. You get, if done in the kind of totality that Trump appears to be building, not even so much as single party rule, but single person rule. If the loyalty test is to Trump himself, then all things are permissible, all utterances from Trump correct, and all policy unmolested by such things as actual thought.
And it will also make the process for hiring new federal workers slow, painful, and deeply ambiguous.
Using various Trump-approved technical and alternative assessments would require candidates to participate in live exercises, evaluate work-related scenarios, submit a work sample, solve problems related to skill competencies, or submit additional writing samples that would need to be reviewed. The amount of manual labor involved in the new policies, the HR official warned, is insane."
Everything in it will make it more difficult to hire, not less," the HR official said. How the f- do you define if someone is patriotic?"
Jenny Mattingley, a vice president of government affairs at the Partnership for Public Service,told Politicothat she agreed that requiring a loyalty test would make federal recruiting harder.
Many federal employees are air traffic controllers, national park rangers, food safety inspectors, and firefighters who carry out the missions of agencies that are authorized by Congress," Mattingley said. These public servants, who deliver services directly to the public, should not be forced to answer politicized questions that fail to evaluate the skills they need to do their jobs effectively."
Except that misses the point entirely. The idea here is not to hire the best people for these federal jobs. That much is plainly obvious to anyone with a couple of braincells to rub together. Instead, the chief aim is to create a hive-mind of sorts among the federal workforce, in which staff members are mere extensions of the president's will, rather than the People's.
To take but one example, if you think aviation and air traffic control is in trouble right now, just wait until those roles are staffed with people who's chief qualifying characteristic is being able to agree with anything that spills out of the president's mouth.