Permanent Protections for Non-Partisan Civil Servants

Project 2025 is actively purging non-partisan civil servants. Project 2026 defends expertise, merit, and democracy from a return to political loyalty tests.

This is just a starting position, as with all Project 2026 writing and ideas. Nothing is fixed in concrete, but we must start making a plan. Project 2025 has been in progress for 50 years, and the GOP has been playing the long game. We need to have a plan in place. Opinions, ideas, and suggestions are all welcome.

Top 25 Focus Areas for a Progressive Counter-Agenda

Permanent Protections for Non-Partisan Civil Servants
Oppose radical restructuring of federal agencies by partisan actors.
Restore merit-based hiring and career protections for federal employees.

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Permanent Protections for Non-Partisan Civil Servants

Oppose Radical Restructuring of Federal Agencies by Partisan Actors. Restore Merit-Based Hiring and Career Protections for Federal Employees.

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At the heart of a functioning democracy is not only the will of the electorate but also the integrity of its institutions. While political administrations come and go, the machinery of government must operate with stability, expertise, and non-partisan accountability. The career civil service—the backbone of the U.S. government—is not merely a workforce. It is the immune system of democracy. It defends against political excess, preserves institutional memory, and ensures the consistent delivery of public services across administrations.

In recent years, however, these career protections have come under sustained and coordinated attack. Led by the architects of Project 2025, the far-right faction behind Donald Trump’s policy infrastructure, there is an explicit agenda to dismantle the neutral civil service and replace it with a cadre of loyalist appointees. This transformation is not subtle. It is structural, it is strategic, and it is profoundly dangerous. If successful, it would convert the U.S. government into a tool of political retribution and ideological enforcement; erasing a century of reforms meant to ensure the government serves the people, not the party in power.

This essay makes the case for permanent protections for non-partisan civil servants as an essential pillar of democratic resilience, drawing on history, policy, and the explicit threats posed by Project 2025.

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I. Why This Matters: The Soul of Public Service

The average American interacts with government most often through the work of civil servants: the Social Security analyst, the FEMA emergency manager, the scientist at the EPA, the inspector at the FDA. These are not political operatives. They are skilled professionals tasked with safeguarding the nation’s health, economy, environment, and security.

A functioning civil service rests on two principles:

1. Merit-based hiring and promotion, free from political patronage or retribution.

2. Career protections that allow government employees to speak the truth, report wrongdoing, and uphold law and science without fear of being fired for political reasons.

Destroy these pillars, and you destroy the integrity of government itself. Political neutrality isn’t a luxury, it’s a precondition for effective governance.

Without it, we risk returning to a government of cronies and loyalists, where competence is secondary to allegiance, and facts are subordinate to ideology. This isn’t theory. This is the explicit goal of Project 2025, and it is already being aggressively implemented.

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II. A Brief History of Non-Partisan Governance

A. The Pendleton Act of 1883

The modern civil service began as a corrective to rampant corruption. After President James Garfield was assassinated by a disgruntled office-seeker denied a patronage job, the American people demanded reform. The result was the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which established that federal positions should be awarded based on merit, not political connection. It marked the beginning of a professional bureaucracy, and the end of the so-called “spoils system” where each administration would fire government workers en masse to install their own supporters.

B. Expansion During the New Deal

Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the federal workforce expanded dramatically to implement the New Deal. Expertise became embedded in the state: economists to manage recovery programs, scientists to monitor environmental degradation, engineers to build infrastructure. The idea was simple but revolutionary: governance should be done by those with the knowledge to do it well.

C. Civil Service Reform Act of 1978

Under President Jimmy Carter, the Civil Service Reform Act refined and modernized hiring, discipline, and performance evaluation within the federal workforce. While Ronald Reagan would later diminish labor protections in practice, the bipartisan consensus held: the civil service must remain politically independent and professionally competent.

That consensus has now shattered.

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III. Project 2025: Dismantling the Neutral State

Project 2025 is not coy about its goals. Under the guise of “restoring accountability” and “draining the swamp,” the initiative outlines a blueprint to replace career professionals with political loyalists and strip away the independence of federal agencies.

Let’s examine its core components:

A. Reinstating Schedule F

One of the Trump administration’s final acts before leaving office in 2021 was Executive Order 13957, which created a new category of federal employee: Schedule F. This designation allowed agencies to reclassify career civil servants involved in policymaking as “at-will” employees; meaning they could be fired without cause. The move would have affected thousands of experts, including economists, scientists, and national security analysts.

The Biden administration quickly rescinded it. But Project 2025 calls for not only reinstating Schedule F but expanding it, applying it broadly across departments to create a shadow patronage system. That means entire swaths of the government could be purged based on ideology alone.

B. Undermining Performance Appraisals

Project 2025 takes aim at performance systems that protect civil servants. By falsely claiming that high performance ratings are evidence of “lack of accountability,” the blueprint proposes tying job security to ideological alignment and presidential priorities.

This is a dog whistle for loyalty enforcement, not objective competence, not effectiveness in serving the public.

C. Hiring Freezes and End-of-Term Sabotage

In a stunningly anti-democratic move, Project 2025 proposes a freeze on federal hiring in the final year of any presidential term, based on the conspiratorial claim that Democratic administrations “burrow in” allies to prevent conservative dominance.

This would cripple transition planning, gut workforce continuity, and undermine every outgoing administration’s ability to govern; setting up the incoming regime to rule without resistance.

D. Attacks on National Security Institutions

Perhaps most dangerously, the plan targets the intelligence community, painting seasoned analysts as ideological saboteurs who must be removed. The goal is to install politically reliable operatives who will echo the administration’s talking points, regardless of facts on the ground. This would be a catastrophic breach of national security norms; one that risks everything from counterterrorism failures to emboldened foreign adversaries.

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IV. The Risk of a Hollowed-Out Government

The consequences of this radical vision are not hypothetical. We’ve seen what happens when expertise is cast aside for politics.

• During COVID-19, sidelining career public health experts led to preventable deaths and public distrust.

• At the EPA, political appointees overruled scientists on environmental rules, accelerating ecological harm.

• In the intelligence community, Trump allies undermined election security briefings to protect the administration's narrative, opening the door to foreign interference.

Stripping civil service protections would turn every government agency into an ideological weapon. The IRS could target political enemies. The Department of Justice could be used to shield cronies. The Census could be rigged to disenfranchise communities. Even emergency response could be allocated by political loyalty rather than public need.

And crucially, it would destroy the institutional memory that makes large-scale governance possible. Engineers who maintain our power grid, inspectors who protect our food supply, lawyers who enforce civil rights laws, all replaced by temporary hacks with zero long-term stake in the public good.

This is not “small government.” It is vengeful government. It is authoritarianism in a lab coat.

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V. The Progressive Counter-Agenda: Reinforce, Codify, and Protect

In response, Project 2026 proposes the following reforms to permanently safeguard the non-partisan civil service:

1. Codify the Prohibition of Schedule F

Congress must pass legislation that prohibits the re-creation of Schedule F or any similar at-will category designed to circumvent civil service protections. This prohibition should be explicit, detailed, and enforceable.

2. Modernize and Reinforce the Pendleton and Civil Service Reform Acts

We must modernize merit systems with strong whistleblower protections, anti-retaliation enforcement, and guardrails against political interference. This includes legally defining civil service neutrality as a national security interest.

3. Establish an Independent Civil Service Ombuds Office

An empowered, independently funded oversight office should monitor hiring practices, investigate retaliation claims, and protect professionals from ideological purges. It must have the authority to recommend reinstatement, block illegal reclassifications, and report publicly.

4. Reform Performance Management Systems

Performance appraisals should focus on outcomes, not ideology. Evaluation should be peer-reviewed, transparent, and protected from politicization.

5. Enshrine Continuity as a Democratic Value

New laws must guarantee smooth transitions between administrations and prohibit hiring freezes designed to sabotage incoming or outgoing governance. Continuity is not partisan. It is patriotic.

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Conclusion: The People’s Government, Not the Party’s

In the end, the civil service is not a threat to democracy, it is its scaffold. A government of laws cannot function if those laws are executed by people who owe their jobs to loyalty, not legality. America cannot afford a return to the spoils system. We cannot survive a government purged of professionals and overrun by partisans.

The call to protect non-partisan civil servants is not bureaucratic. It is revolutionary.

It is a declaration that truth still matters, that expertise is not the enemy, and that a free society depends on those who serve it with integrity, not fealty.

Project 2025 envisions a government where loyalty trumps law. Project 2026 must deliver a future where law outlasts loyalty.

Let that be the promise we fight for, and the one we keep.

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Sources and Context:

Historical and Legal Context

Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act (1883)

• U.S. National Archives: Summary: Ended the spoils system; established merit-based hiring for federal jobs.

Civil Service Reform Act (1978)

• Office of Personnel Management (OPM): Summary: Created modern performance systems and reinforced merit principles.

Schedule F and Trump-Era Threats

Executive Order 13957 – Creating Schedule F (October 21, 2020)

• Federal Register: Summary: Allowed political reclassification and at-will firing of career officials.

• Biden’s Revocation of Schedule F (Executive Order 14003)

Project 2025 Source Material

Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership – The Conservative Promise

• Heritage Foundation: Specific chapters on Civil Service: e.g., Paul Dans and Troup Hemenway sectionsproject-2025s-mandate-f

• Notable claims: Schedule F revival, loyalty-based purging, ending merit protection.

• ALSO See: 25 and Me - a topical navigator

Brookings Institution – “What is Schedule F?” Summary: Analysis of how Schedule F undermines civil service neutrality.

Civil Society and Policy Watchdogs

Partnership for Public Service – Nonpartisan research on federal workforce

• Use for stats on workforce experience, vacancies, and the consequences of politicization.

7. National Academy of Public Administration – Reports on the importance of merit systems

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