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    New Questions on How a Key Agency Shared Inflation Data

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    A government economist had regular contact with “super users” in finance, records show, at a time when such information keenly interests investors.The Bureau of Labor Statistics shared more information about inflation with Wall Street “super users” than previously disclosed, emails from the agency show. The revelation is likely to prompt further scrutiny of the way the government shares economic data at a time when such information keenly interests investors.An economist at the agency set off a firestorm in February when he sent an email to a group of data users explaining how a methodological tweak could have contributed to an unexpected jump in housing costs in the Consumer Price Index the previous month. The email, addressed to “Super Users,” circulated rapidly around Wall Street, where every detail of inflation data can affect the bond market.At the time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the email had been an isolated “mistake” and denied that it maintained a list of users who received special access to information.But emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show that the agency — or at least the economist who sent the original email, a longtime but relatively low-ranking employee — was in regular communication with data users in the finance industry, apparently including analysts at major hedge funds. And they suggest that there was a list of super users, contrary to the agency’s denials.“Would it be possible to be on the super user email list?” one user asked in mid-February.“Yes I can add you to the list,” the employee replied minutes later.A reporter’s efforts to reach the employee, whose identity the bureau confirmed, were unsuccessful.Emily Liddel, an associate commissioner at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, said that the agency did not maintain an official list of super users and that the employee appeared to have created the list on his own.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New Havana Syndrome Studies Find No Evidence of Brain Injuries

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      The findings from the National Institutes of Health are at odds with previous research that looked into the mysterious health incidents experienced by U.S. diplomats and spies.New studies by the National Institutes of Health failed to find evidence of brain injury in scans or blood markers of the diplomats and spies who suffered symptoms of Havana syndrome, bolstering the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies about the strange health incidents.Spy agencies have concluded that the debilitating symptoms associated with Havana syndrome, including dizziness and migraines, are not the work of a hostile foreign power. They have not identified a weapon or device that caused the injuries, and intelligence analysts now believe the symptoms are most likely explained by environmental factors, existing medical conditions or stress.The lead scientist on one of the two new studies said that while the study was not designed to find a cause, the findings were consistent with those determinations.The authors said the studies are at odds with findings from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, who found differences in brain scans of people with Havana syndrome symptoms and a control groupDr. David Relman, a prominent scientist who has had access to the classified files involving the cases and representatives of people suffering from Havana syndrome, said the new studies were flawed. Many brain injuries are difficult to detect with scans or blood markers, he said. He added that the findings do not dispute that an external force, like a directed energy device, could have injured the current and former government workers.The studies were published in The Journal of the American Medical Association on Monday alongside an editorial by Dr. Relman that was critical of the findings.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      President of Powerful Service Workers Union Will Step Down

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      Mary Kay Henry of the nearly two-million-member Service Employees International Union will not seek re-election when her term ends in May.Mary Kay Henry, the president of the Service Employees International Union, one of the nation’s largest and most politically powerful labor unions, announced Tuesday that she would step down after 14 years in her position.Ms. Henry was the first woman elected to lead the union, which represents nearly two million workers like janitors and home health aides in both the public and private sectors.Under her leadership, it launched a major initiative known as the Fight for $15, which sought to organize fast-food workers and push for a $15 minimum wage. Winning over skeptics in the ranks, Ms. Henry argued that the union could make gains through a broad-based campaign that targeted the industry as a whole rather than individual employers.Labor experts and industry officials cite the campaign as a major force behind significant minimum-wage increases in states including California and New York and cities like Seattle and Chicago. It also pushed a recent California law creating a council to set a minimum wage in the fast-food industry, which will become $20 an hour in April, and to propose new health and safety standards.But the Fight for $15 campaign has not unionized workers on a large scale and enabled them to negotiate collective bargaining agreements with their employers.Ms. Henry’s tenure has coincided with a series of legislative and legal challenges to organized labor, including state laws rolling back collective bargaining rights and allowing workers to opt out of once-mandatory union fees, as well as a landmark Supreme Court ruling allowing government employees to do the same.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Much Can Trump 2.0 Get Away With?

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      “I am your warrior, I am your justice,” Donald Trump told the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md. on March 4. “And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”How much power would Trump have in a second term to enact his agenda of revenge?I asked Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard, how free Trump would be to pursue his draconian plan.Tribe replied by email:There is little doubt that Donald Trump could impose authoritarian policies that endanger dissent, erase the requirements that ensure at least a modicum of the consent of the governed, and are downright dictatorial while acting entirely within the literal scope of the law although, needless to say, in flagrant defiance of its spirit. Neither the Constitution’s text nor the language of the federal statutes and regulations in force create guardrails that Trump would need to crash through in a way that courts hewing to the text would feel an obligation to prevent or to redress.Congress and the courts have granted the president powers that, in Trump’s hands, could fundamentally weaken rights and freedoms most Americans believe are secure and guaranteed under law.Tribe continued:Many of the statutes Congress has enacted, especially in the post-World War II era, delegate to any sitting president such extraordinary powers to declare “national emergencies” when, in their own unreviewable judgment, the “national interest” or the ‘national security’ warrants, and give presidential declarations of that kind the power to trigger such sweeping executive authorities that a president could comfortably indulge authoritarian aspirations of demoting or detaining all those who stand in their way or of seizing property or otherwise restricting personal liberty and the rights of private citizens and organizations without raising a legal eyebrow.Jack Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School, argued that the same lack of restraint applies if a president wants to initiate criminal investigations of his or her opponents and critics. In an email replying to my queries, Balkin wrote:A president giving orders to an obedient Justice Department can exact revenge on political enemies and chill political opposition. It is not even necessary to send anyone to prison. For many people and organizations, the costs of defending a criminal investigation and prosecution can be ruinous and a sufficient deterrent. Moreover, if the public merely believed that the president was using the intelligence services and the I.R.S. to investigate political opponents, this could also chill opposition.Balkin noted that after Watergate, “the Justice Department adopted internal guidelines to prevent presidents from abusing the prosecution power, but the president, as head of the executive branch, can direct his subordinates to alter these guidelines.”President Trump, Balkin wrote,has declared the press to be the enemy of the people and so such prosecutions might even be popular among his supporters. Second, a leader who wishes to amass power and avoid accountability benefits from making the press docile and afraid of retribution. Once again, even if the government never obtains a criminal conviction, the chilling effect on the press can be significant.Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at N.Y.U.’s Brennan Center for Justice, is an expert on emergency powers delegated to the president. She replied by email to my questions concerning presidential powers:The Brennan Center has identified more than 130 statutory provisions that may be invoked when the president declares a “national emergency.” The president has near-total discretion to declare such an emergency, and he may renew the declaration every year without limit.One of the most worrisome statutory provisions, given Trump’s threats to deploy the military in large cities, Goitein continued, “is the Insurrection Act, which was intended to allow the president to deploy federal troops domestically to quell insurrections or civil unrest that overwhelms civilian authorities, or to enforce civil rights laws against obstruction.”The law, she wrote,is written in such broad and archaic terms (it was last amended 150 years ago) that it places few clear limits on the president’s ability to deploy troops to act as a domestic police force. And what limits can be inferred are effectively unenforceable, as the Supreme Court has held that the statute does not, on its face, permit judicial review of a president’s decision to deploy. Similarly, Congress has no role in approving deployments, leaving this powerful authority with no effective checks against abuse.Goitein identified three other laws that are particularly concerning:A provision of the Communications Act allows the president to shut down or take over radio communications facilities in a national emergency. If the president declares “a threat of war,” he can also shut down or take over wire communications facilities. Today, it could be interpreted to give the president control over U.S.-based internet traffic.The International Emergency Economic Powers Act allows the president to freeze any asset (including those of Americans) or prevent any financial transaction with a designated person or entity (including Americans) if he deems it necessary to address a threat emanating at least partially from overseas.One statute permits the Transportation Security Administration, during a national emergency, to carry out such duties and exercise such powers “relating to transportation during a national emergency” as the Secretary of Homeland Security shall prescribe. This provision is so vague and ill-defined, it could conceivably authorize an administration to exert compete control over domestic transportation — including shutting it down entirely — during a national emergency.These concerns are held by both Democrats and Republicans.Michael W. McConnell, who served as a George W. Bush appointee to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and is now director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, shared some of Goitein’s qualms, writing by email:The Emergencies Act is dangerously sweeping and should be reconsidered. At the time it was passed, Congress retained a congressional veto, but congressional vetoes were subsequently declared unconstitutional. Now there is no mechanism for congressional override except by passage of ordinary legislation, which is subject to presidential veto and thus politically almost impossible.One of Trump’s most startling proposals is to create a new category of federal employee known as Schedule F. It would eliminate civil service protections against arbitrary firing and other punishments for an estimated 50,000 or more elite federal workers. Their jobs would, in effect, become political patronage appointments.The Office of Personnel Management described Schedule F as directing federal agencies “to move potentially large swaths of career employees into a new ‘at will’ status that would purportedly strip them of civil service protection.”Experts in federal employment law disagree over whether, in a second term, Trump would have the power to initiate a radical change like Schedule F without congressional approval.Anne Joseph O’Connell, a law professor at Stanford whose research focuses on administrative law and the federal bureaucracy, wrote by email that Trump may have the authority to create a new Schedule F. But, she added, the scope of the change in traditional practices called for by the proposal may make it subject to judicial review.“The statute provides the president broad authority to create exceptions to the civil service,” O’Connell wrote, but compared to earlier executive changes “Schedule F would cover vastly more positions. I think such an enactment might run up against the major questions doctrine.”In 2022, the Congressional Research Service described the Major Questions Doctrine:Congress frequently delegates authority to agencies to regulate particular aspects of society, in general or broad terms. However, in a number of decisions, the Supreme Court has declared that if an agency seeks to decide an issue of major national significance, its action must be supported by clear congressional authorization.Donald F. Kettl, a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, has been working with fellow of scholars seeking to prevent the creation of Schedule F, emailed me that:The one thing for certain is this: Any effort to recreate a Schedule F — and I’m told that conservative circles have a new executive order ready to go on Day 1 of a new Republican presidency — is certain to be challenged in the courts. The challenge would be on the grounds that creating a massive new effort would violate the letter and spirit of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978.Kettl agreed with O’Connell thatthe consensus is that the president has the authority to create a Schedule F, under the same rules as applied to the other schedules. The big difference, of course, is that Schedule F could potentially apply to far more employees. Its proponents say it could apply to 50,000, to perhaps as many as 100,000 federal employees.The court challenge to Schedule F, Kettl continued, would be based “on its scope and its effort to undo the civil service protections now being provided to tens of thousands (or many more) federal employees.”The key issue in the case of Schedule F is how the Supreme Court would view such an extreme alteration of federal employment practices resulting from a unilateral presidential decision.David Engstrom, who is also a law professor at Stanford, wrote by email:As with so much else in American politics nowadays, it will be for courts to decide whether Schedule F runs afoul of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. There are good arguments either way. Trump’s executive order ran contrary to several decades of congressional actions creating a professional and independent civil service — a notable strike against longstanding case law sketching the limits of the President’s policy initiation power.But, Engstrom added,were the issue to go before courts in a second Trump administration, it is equally notable that Schedule F is consistent with a pillar of the Roberts Court’s separation-of-powers jurisprudence, the “unitary executive” theory, which holds that the Constitution vests the President with extensive control over the workings of the executive branch. That broad, pro-president view will surely overhang legal challenges, particularly at the Supreme Court.Erica Newland, counsel at Project Democracy, disputed the claim that the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 gives Trump the power to create a Schedule F, writing by email: “The C.S.R.A. doesn’t give Trump and his allies the power they say it does and we have 70 years of history to back that up.” Instead, “the C.S.R.A. in fact limits who Trump can exempt from hiring and firing protections.”But, Newland quickly pointed out,unlawfulness rarely stops Trump. Even if the courts ultimately strike down Schedule F, by issuing the executive order, Trump will send a message across government that personal loyalty to him — rather than the Constitution — is a job qualification. This is a classic authoritarian move.In that political environment, she contended, “the first responsibility of those who manage government services — such as our food safety, aviation, and weather services — would be demonstrating fealty to Trump, not protecting the American people.”Timothy Wu, a law professor at Columbia and a Times contributing Opinion writer, argued by email that the major constraints on Trump during a second term would not be legal but the power of public opinion, what Wu calls the “unwritten constitution: “Many of the things that Trump might want to do may not be explicitly barred by the written Constitution, enforced by courts, but by the unwritten constitution, enforced by longstanding practice and the refusal of individuals to contravene it.”Trump, Wu wrote, wouldlike to (1) direct specific U.S. prosecutors whom to indict (2) directly tell the U.S. Justice Department who to sue (3) have the U.S. military intervene domestically to suppress civil disorder (4) fire a far greater number of federal employees than has been the practice, and (5) rely on Senate-unconfirmed acting appointees. To various degrees these are all things within the theoretical limits of Article II and there are limited if any Congressional restraints.Wu argued that individual citizens would be very likely to defy some of Trump’s orders:Take prosecutorial independence. The ordering by a president of an individual indictment breaks unwritten norms prevalent since the revolution. If Trump made the order, it would likely be refused. It might lead to a joint refusal among all prosecutors, a Constitutional crisis, and possible Congressional intervention to codify the norms of prosecutorial independence.John Lawrence, a former chief of staff to Nancy Pelosi, when she was speaker of the House, makes the point that presidents cherish their autonomy.Any executive action is subject to review by the courts or Congress, even if the president claims to be acting within these authorities. The problem would come if Trump decided to defy the courts, as did President Andrew Jackson when, disagreeing with a ruling against Georgia on the issue of Indian relocation, he dismissed Chief Justice John Marshall’s 1832 ruling with the admonition, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”The imprecision of many laws governing the nation’s chief executive would offer Trump the opportunity to enlarge his powers. One such technique would be to fill key posts with “acting” appointees, effectively circumventing the senatorial review that would come through the confirmation process.Max Stier, founding president and chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, wrote in an email that “Congress needs to both fix the confirmation process and address the large holes in the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998.”There are, Stier wrote:a cascade of options available that could potentially be used to significantly extend the shelf life of an acting appointee. There is a nominal 210-day limit for acting officials, but the relevant legislation offers a number of ways that timeline can be extended, especially if formal nominations fail in the Senate. Under certain circumstances, an acting leader could serve in that role for more than 500 days under the law. Pushing the boundaries beyond that is untested and pursuing it would likely trigger legal challenges.Newland (of Project Democracy) argued that Trump could keep an acting appointee in office even longer than 500 days: “Although the law was intended to establish an overarching time limit on temporary appointments, the 210-day period can be extended, without a clear limit, as long as the president has nominated someone to permanently fill the vacant office.”All told, Newland wrote, “the cumulative effect of the law’s generous grace periods could allow an acting official to serve for two years or more.”Much of the focus on the prospect of a second Trump term has been on the willingness of his supporters to accept without qualm his more outrageous proposals and claims, including the “big lie” that Biden and his allies stole the 2020 election.What the comments by legal and employment experts in this column suggest is that American democracy is itself ill-equipped to fend off a president willing to adopt authoritarian tactics.When he took office on Jan. 20, 2017, Trump had little or no preparation for his obligations as president.On Jan. 20, 2025, in contrast, a newly elected Trump would assume the presidency armed with voluminous research conducted by a virtual White House in waiting, dominated by a network of think tanks, including the Heritage Foundation, the Claremont Institute, the Center for Renewing America and the America First Policy Institute.Together, these pro-Trump nonprofits have been drawing up legislation, collecting lists of loyal personnel, writing budgets and detailing executive orders designed to get the administration up and running from its first day.The Heritage Foundation has organized Project 2025, a coalition of 84 state and national conservative groups, to pave “the way for an effective conservative Administration based on four pillars: a policy agenda, Presidential Personnel Database, Presidential Administration Academy and playbook for the first 180 days of the next Administration.”The project has already published an 887-page document, “Mandate for Leadership 2025: the Conservative Promise,” with the goal of arming “an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day 1 to deconstruct the Administrative State.”The first Trump term was both deeply alarming and a comedy of errors; a second Trump administration will be far more alarming, with many fewer errors.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Trump Has a Master Plan for Destroying the ‘Deep State’

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      I study government bureaucracies. This is not normally a key political issue. Right now, it is, and everyone should be paying attention.Donald Trump, the former president and current candidate, puts it in apocalyptic terms: “Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state.” This is not an empty threat. He has a real and plausible plan to utterly transform American government. It will undermine the quality of that government and it will threaten our democracy.A second Trump administration would be very different from the first. Mr. Trump’s blueprint for amassing power has been developed by a constellation of conservative organizations that surround him, led by the Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025. This plan would elevate personal fealty to Mr. Trump as the central value in government employment, processes and institutions.It has three major parts.The first is to put Trump loyalists into appointment positions. Mr. Trump believed that “the resistance” to his presidency included his own appointees. Unlike in 2016, he now has a deep bench of loyalists. The Heritage Foundation and dozens of other Trump-aligned organizations are screening candidates to create 20,000 potential MAGA appointees. They will be placed in every agency across government, including the agencies responsible for protecting the environment, regulating workplace safety, collecting taxes, determining immigration policy, maintaining safety net programs, representing American interests overseas and ensuring the impartial rule of law.These are not conservatives reluctantly serving Mr. Trump out of a sense of patriotic duty, but those enthusiastic about helping a twice-impeached president who tried to overturn the results of an election. An influx of appointees like this would come at a cost to the rest of us. Political science research that examines the effects of politicization on federal agencies shows that political appointees, especially inexperienced ones, are associated with lower performance in government and less responsiveness to the public and to Congress.The second part of the Trump plan is to terrify career civil servants into submission. To do so, he would reimpose an executive order that he signed but never implemented at the end of his first administration. The Schedule F order would allow him to convert many of these officials into political appointees.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      Los planes de Trump y sus aliados para ejercer el poder en 2025

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      Utilizar el Departamento de Justicia para vengarse de sus adversarios y aumentar la represión a los inmigrantes serían algunas de las prioridades de Trump si regresa a la Casa Blanca.En el primer mitin de su campaña presidencial de 2024, el expresidente Donald Trump declaró: “Yo soy su castigo”. Más tarde, prometió utilizar el Departamento de Justicia para perseguir a sus adversarios políticos, empezando por el presidente Joe Biden y su familia.Detrás de estas amenazas públicas hay una serie de planes de Trump y sus aliados que pondrían en jaque elementos fundamentales de la gobernanza, la democracia, la política exterior y el Estado de derecho de Estados Unidos si regresa a la Casa Blanca.Algunos de estos temas se remontan al último periodo del mandato de Trump. Para entonces, sus asesores clave habían aprendido a ejercer el poder con mayor eficacia y Trump había despedido a funcionarios que se resistían a algunos de sus impulsos y los había sustituido por partidarios leales. Entonces, perdió las elecciones de 2020 y tuvo que abandonar el poder.Desde que dejó el cargo, los asesores y aliados de Trump en una red de grupos bien financiados han perfeccionado políticas, creado listas de posibles funcionarios y comenzado a dar forma a un nuevo andamiaje jurídico, con lo que han sentado las bases para una segunda presidencia de Trump que esperan que comience el 20 de enero de 2025.En una declaración poco clara, dos de los funcionarios más importantes de la campaña de Trump buscaron distanciar a su equipo de campaña de algunos de los planes que desarrollan los aliados externos del expresidente, grupos liderados por antiguos altos mandos de su gobierno que siguen en contacto directo con él. La declaración calificó los informes de noticias sobre el personal y las intenciones políticas de la campaña como “puramente especulativos y teóricos”.Los planes descritos aquí se derivan de lo que Trump ha pregonado en la campaña, lo que ha aparecido en su sitio web de campaña y de entrevistas con asesores de Trump, incluido uno que habló con The New York Times a petición de la campaña.Trump quiere usar al Departamento de Justicia para vengarse de sus adversarios políticosSi vuelve a ganar la presidencia, Trump ha declarado que usaría el Departamento de Justicia para iniciar investigaciones en contra de sus adversarios y acusarlos de cometer delitos, incluso dijo en junio que nombraría a “un fiscal especial de verdad para ir tras” Biden y su familia. Más tarde declaró en una entrevista con Univisión que, si alguien lo desafiaba por motivos políticos, podría hacer que esa persona fuera acusada formalmente.Los aliados de Trump también han estado desarrollando un proyecto intelectual para desechar la norma posterior al Watergate sobre la independencia investigadora del Departamento de Justicia respecto a la dirección política de la Casa Blanca.Anticipándose a eso, Trump ya había violado las normas en su campaña de 2016, cuando prometió “encarcelar” a su oponente, Hillary Clinton, por usar un servidor de correo electrónico privado. Durante su presidencia, dijo en varias ocasiones a sus asesores que quería que el Departamento de Justicia presentara cargos contra sus enemigos políticos, incluidos funcionarios a quienes había despedido como James Comey, exdirector del FBI. El Departamento de Justicia abrió varias investigaciones de este tipo, pero no presentó cargos, lo cual enfureció a Trump y provocó una ruptura en 2020 con Bill Barr, su fiscal general.Se propone llevar a cabo una represión extrema de la migraciónTrump planea un ataque a la migración a una escala nunca antes vista en la historia moderna de Estados Unidos. A millones de migrantes que entraron ilegalmente en Estados Unidos se les prohibiría estar en el país o se les deportaría años o incluso décadas después de haberse establecido aquí.Reforzados por agentes reasignados de otros organismos federales de procuración de justicia, la policía estatal y la Guardia Nacional, los funcionarios del Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas llevarían a cabo redadas masivas destinadas a deportar a millones de personas cada año. Se emplearían fondos militares con el propósito de construir campamentos para albergar a los detenidos. Se invocaría una ley de emergencia de salud pública para suspender las solicitudes de asilo de las personas que llegan a la frontera. Y el gobierno trataría de poner fin a la ciudadanía por derecho de nacimiento para los bebés nacidos en suelo estadounidense de padres sin estatus legal.Trump tiene planes para usar la fuerza militar estadounidense más cerca de casaMientras estaba en el cargo, Trump pensó en usar el Ejército para atacar a los cárteles de drogas en México, una idea que violaría el derecho internacional a menos que México consintiera. Desde entonces, esa idea ha recibido un respaldo republicano más amplio y Trump pretende hacerla realidad si vuelve al Despacho Oval.Aunque la Ley Posse Comitatus prohíbe en general el uso de soldados federales con fines policiales, otra ley, la Ley de Insurrección, establece una excepción. Trump quería invocar la Ley de Insurrección a fin de utilizar al Ejército para reprimir a los manifestantes después de la muerte de George Floyd a manos de la policía en 2020, pero no lo logró y la idea sigue siendo importante entre sus asistentes. Entre otras cosas, su principal asesor de migración ha dicho que invocarían la Ley de Insurrección en la frontera sur para usar soldados con la finalidad de interceptar y detener a los migrantes que ingresan a Estados Unidos de manera ilegal.Trump y sus aliados quieren un mayor control sobre la burocracia federal y la fuerza laboralTrump y sus partidarios quieren aumentar el poder que tiene el presidente sobre las agencias federales, lo cual implicaría concentrar en la Casa Blanca un mayor control sobre toda la maquinaria del gobierno.Para ello han adoptado una versión maximalista de la llamada teoría del ejecutivo unitario, según la cual el presidente tiene autoridad directa sobre toda la burocracia federal y es inconstitucional que el Congreso cree reductos de autoridad independiente en la toma de decisiones.Como parte de ese plan, Trump también pretende revivir una iniciativa del final de su presidencia para alterar las normas de servicio civil que protegen a los profesionales de carrera del gobierno, lo que le permitiría despedir a decenas de miles de trabajadores federales y remplazarlos por partidarios. Después de que el Congreso fracasó en su intento de promulgar una ley para impedir que ese cambio sucediera, el gobierno de Biden decidió redactar un reglamento para blindar a los empleados federales contra Trump. Sin embargo, dado que se trata solo de una acción ejecutiva, el próximo presidente republicano podría dejarla sin efecto de la misma manera.Los aliados de Trump quieren abogados que no lo limitenLos abogados con designación política frustraron en ocasiones los deseos de Trump al plantear objeciones legales a sus ideas y a las de sus principales asesores. Esta dinámica ha provocado una división silenciosa en la derecha, ya que los partidarios leales a Trump han llegado a ver con desdén al típico abogado de la Sociedad Federalista, en esencia, un conservador republicano de la corriente dominante.En un posible nuevo mandato, los aliados de Trump están planeando instalar de forma sistemática guardianes legales más agresivos y alineados ideológicamente, que serán más propensos a aprobar acciones contenciosas. En un sondeo de The New York Times sobre candidatos presidenciales para 2024, Trump y su equipo de campaña se negaron a responder a una serie de preguntas detalladas sobre qué límites, de haberlos, reconocería a sus poderes en una serie de asuntos bélicos, de confidencialidad y de aplicación de la ley, muchos de ellos planteados en su primer mandato.Jonathan Swan es periodista de política especializado en campañas y el Congreso estadounidense. Como reportero de Axios, ganó un Emmy por su entrevista de 2020 al entonces presidente Donald Trump, así como el Premio Aldo Beckman de la Asociación de Corresponsales de la Casa Blanca por “excelencia en general en la cobertura de la Casa Blanca” en 2022. Más de Jonathan SwanMaggie Haberman es corresponsal política sénior y autora de Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. Formó parte del equipo que ganó un premio Pulitzer en 2018 por informar sobre los asesores del presidente Trump y sus conexiones con Rusia. Más de Maggie HabermanCharlie Savage escribe sobre seguridad nacional y política legal. Es periodista desde hace más de dos décadas. Más de Charlie Savage More

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      Biden Administration Aims to Trump-Proof the Federal Work Force

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      If Donald Trump wins a second term, he and his allies want to revive a plan to allow a president to fire civil service workers who are supposed to be hired on merit. The Biden administration is trying to thwart it.When President Biden took office, he swiftly canceled an executive order his predecessor Donald J. Trump had issued that could have enabled Mr. Trump to fire tens of thousands of federal workers and replace them with loyalists. But Democrats never succeeded in enacting legislation to strengthen protections for the civil service system as a matter of law.Now, with Mr. Trump seemingly poised to win the G.O.P. nomination again, the Biden administration is instead trying to effectively Trump-proof the civil service with a new regulation.On Friday, the White House proposed a new rule that would make it more onerous to reinstate Mr. Trump’s old executive order if Mr. Trump or a like-minded Republican wins the 2024 election.But Trump allies who would most likely have senior roles in any second Trump administration shrugged off the proposed Biden rule, saying they could simply use the same rule-making process to roll back the new regulation and then proceed. Legal experts agreed.The proposed rule addresses the move Mr. Trump tried to make late in his presidency by issuing an executive order known in shorthand as Schedule F. It would have empowered his administration to effectively transform many career federal employees — who are supposed to be hired based on merit and cannot be arbitrarily fired — into political appointees who can be hired and fired at will.Career civil servants include professional staff across the government who stay on when the presidency changes hands. They vary widely, including law enforcement officers and technical experts at agencies that Congress created to make rules aimed at ensuring the air and water are clean and food, drugs and consumer products are safe.Mr. Trump and senior advisers on his team came to believe that career officials who raised objections to their policies on legal or practical grounds — including some of their disputed immigration plans — were deliberately sabotaging their agenda. Portraying federal employees as unaccountable bureaucrats, the Trump team has argued that removing job protections for those who have any influence over policymaking is justified because it is too difficult to fire them.Critics saw the move as a throwback to the corrupt 19th-century patronage system, when all federal jobs were partisan spoils rather than based on merit. Congress ended that system with a series of civil-service laws dating back to the Pendleton Act of 1883. Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, described Schedule F as “the most profound undermining of the civil service in our lifetimes.”The legality of Schedule F was never tested because Mr. Biden revoked the order before any federal workers were reclassified. But Mr. Trump has vowed to reinstate it if he returns to office in 2025 — and his motivations, now, are openly vengeful. He has boasted that he will purge a federal bureaucracy that he has disparaged as a “deep state” filled by “villains” like globalists, Marxists and a “sick political class that hates our country.”President Biden’s administration introduced a rule on Friday to strengthen protections for the civil service system.Al Drago for The New York TimesThe proposed new rule was unveiled by the White House’s Office of Personnel Management in a lengthy filing for the Federal Register on Friday. It would allow workers to keep their existing job protections, such as a right to appeal any firing or reassignment, even if their positions were reclassified. It would also tighten the definition of what types of positions can be exempted from civil service job protections, limiting it to non-career political appointees who are expected to turn over when a presidency ends.The regulatory proposal argued that maintaining protections for career civil servants enhances the functioning of American democracy because such federal workers have institutional memory, subject matter expertise and technical knowledge “that incoming political appointees may lack.” They should be free to disagree with their leaders — short of defying lawful orders — without fear of reprisal, the proposed rule states.The public will now have 60 days to comment on the proposed rule, but the Biden administration expects to complete it by early 2024.A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not respond to an email seeking comment on Mr. Biden’s effort.Biden officials and people supportive of their plan are projecting optimism about the significance of the new regulation to bolster protections for the civil service. Among them is Rob Shriver, the deputy director of the Office of Personnel Management, essentially the government’s human resources department.“Our proposed regulation is strong and based in law and has a strong rationale,” Mr. Shriver said. “Anyone who wants to explore a change in policy would have work to do,” he added. “They’d have to go through the same administrative rule-making process and make sure that their policy is grounded in the law.”Mr. Trump’s allies have been aware of the proposed rule since the spring, when the Biden administration cited it on a government website as part of its 2023 regulatory agenda. Trump allies say they don’t expect it to do much more than delay by a number of months their renewal of Schedule F if Mr. Trump wins back the presidency.James Sherk, the former Trump administration official who came up with the idea for Schedule F, defended the order and said that reimposing it would not be difficult despite the new rule.“The Biden administration can, if they want, make removing intransigent or poorly performing senior bureaucrats harder on themselves,” said Mr. Sherk, who now works at the America First Policy Institute, a think tank stocked heavily with former Trump officials. “The next administration can just as easily rescind those restrictions. With regards to reissuing Schedule F, this proposed rule would be a speed bump, but nothing more.”Another fervent supporter of Schedule F is Russell T. Vought, the president of the Center for Renewing America, a think tank with close ties to the former president. In the Trump administration, Mr. Vought had been the director of the Office of Management and Budget. He proposed reassigning nearly 90 percent of his agency’s staff as Schedule F employees, making them vulnerable to being summarily fired if he deemed them obstructive to the president’s agenda.That threat was never acted upon — Mr. Trump issued the Schedule F order in October 2020, shortly before losing re-election — but Biden administration officials say that career civil servants are still living with the hangover from what nearly happened and are anxious about the prospect of Schedule F returning.Russell T. Vought, former director of the Office of Management and Budget, is a fervent supporter of Schedule F.Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesJason Miller, a senior official in Mr. Biden’s Office of Management and Budget who has worked on the new rule, said in an interview that Mr. Trump’s Schedule F order “exposed the fragility of the existing system — the system that has been in place for 140 years to ensure we have a dedicated nonpartisan civil service.”Mr. Miller said the impact of Schedule F “is still felt to this day.” He added, “We have carried that with us. It is not just here in O.M.B. It is across federal agencies.”Mr. Vought, however, said Schedule F was about removing poor performers, and characterized the proposed regulation as little impediment to reviving the idea.“This expected move by the Biden administration to forestall accountability within the bureaucracy against poor performers merely reinforces what we already knew — Schedule F rests on a sound legal foundation, is going to succeed spectacularly and the only chance to stop it is to install procedural roadblocks,” he said.Even if Mr. Trump unexpectedly loses the Republican nomination, there’s a good chance that whomever defeats him will also plan to dismantle the administrative state. Schedule F has swiftly become doctrine across a large swath of the G.O.P., and two of Mr. Trump’s leading rivals are indicating they want to go even further than he does.“On bureaucracy, you know, we’re going to have all these deep-state people, you know, we’re going to start slitting throats on Day 1 and be ready to go,” said Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida at an event in New Hampshire in July.On Wednesday, the businessman Vivek Ramaswamy outlined an even more radical plan than Mr. Trump’s for dismantling much of the government. Mr. Ramaswamy said he would shut down multiple federal agencies and fire 75 percent of the federal work force, although both the legal and practical substance undergirding his attention-seeking proposal appeared thin.“I would not view the efforts to protect the integrity of the professional civil service as just antidotes to Trump,” said Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which has jurisdiction over the federal civil service. “I see them as authoritarianism repellents, generally.”Schedule F has swiftly become doctrine across a large swath of the G.O.P. and Vivek Ramaswamy intends to take it further.Kent Nishimura for The New York TimesDemocrats had initially tried to change federal law to prevent any return of Schedule F, but opposition by Republicans — where Senate rules allow a minority of 40 lawmakers to block most legislation — thwarted the effort.When the House was still controlled by Democrats in the first two years of Mr. Biden’s presidency, it attached a measure strengthening protections for the merit-based civil service system as an amendment to a “must-pass” annual defense bill in 2022. But Republican opposition kept it off the Senate version and then forced Democrats to drop it when the two versions were reconciled.Democrats used their control of the House in Mr. Biden’s first two years to pass proposed reforms in response to the ways in which Mr. Trump’s presidency flouted norms. Other ideas Democrats proposed included making it harder for a president to offer or bestow pardons in situations that raise suspicion of corruption, to refuse to respond to oversight subpoenas and to take outside payments while in office.The House passed a bill that combined those and other ideas in December 2021. But Republicans almost uniformly opposed such measures, portraying them as partisan attacks on Mr. Trump, and the Senate’s filibuster rule meant they had the power to block them from becoming law. And Mr. Biden did not make enacting post-Trump reforms a bully-pulpit focus.Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that seeks to make government more effective, has been working with the Biden administration on this and other proposals to bolster the civil service. He said he understands the vulnerability of the new proposed rule to being overturned, but he said it would make reimposing Schedule F even more vulnerable to legal challenges than it was when Mr. Trump first issued the order.Other Democrats, who fear the return of Mr. Trump and Schedule F, view the Biden effort less enthusiastically.“While the Biden administration’s forthcoming regulation is a good first step to protect the federal civil service from politicization, I’ve consistently said this demands a legislative fix,” said Representative Gerald E. Connolly, who along with Senator Tim Kaine — both Democrats of Virginia — has led congressional efforts to prevent a return of Schedule F.“The Biden administration must make this a top legislative priority,” Mr. Connolly added. “That is the only thing that is going to stop Trump’s crusade to remake the civil service in his image.” More

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      Ramaswamy Says He Would Fire 75 Percent of the Federal Work Force if Elected

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      Vivek Ramaswamy, whose campaign for the Republican nomination has gained attention in recent months, has vowed to dismantle much of the federal government and shutter key agencies.Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican presidential candidate whose strident and sometimes unrealistic proposals have helped him stand out in the crowded primary field, said in a policy speech on Wednesday that he would fire more than 75 percent of the federal work force and shutter several major agencies.Among the government organizations that Mr. Ramaswamy vowed to disband are the Department of Education, the F.B.I., the Food and Nutrition Service, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He said he would move some of their functions to other agencies and departments.Mr. Ramaswamy, 38, also claimed he could make the changes unilaterally if he were to be elected president, putting forward a sweeping theory that the executive wields the power to restructure the federal government on his own and does not need to submit such proposals to Congress for approval.His pitch was another echo of former President Donald J. Trump, whom he has modeled himself after and who sought to expand political control over the federal work force near the end of his term. Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Ramaswamy has also attacked parts of the federal government as a “deep state.” “We will use executive authority to shut down the deep state,” Mr. Ramaswamy said on Wednesday at the America First Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. He flipped through posters displaying government organizational charts as well as what he claimed were common “myths” about the limitations of presidential authority.But legal experts on the separation of powers and administrative law said the legal theories behind his proposal — detailed in an accompanying campaign white paper — were wrong and would not stand up to a court challenge.Peter M. Shane, a scholar in residence at New York University and a specialist in separation-of-powers law, said the paper was “fantastical.” Peter L. Strauss, professor emeritus of law at Columbia University, said it took bits of statutory law “out of context” while “totally ignoring the Constitution,” which mandates that the U.S. Congress create the government departments and agencies that the president then supervises.Mr. Ramaswamy’s vow to shutter large parts of the government and fire most of its workers would also unravel significant parts of the civil service and disrupt government services that are central to the operation of modern American society, including law enforcement, background checks for firearm purchases, student financial aid and special education programs.About 2.25 million people work for the federal government in civilian roles. Cutting more than 75 percent of that work force would result in more than 1.6 million people being fired, saving billions of dollars in the federal budget but also shutting down critical functions of the government.Mr. Ramaswamy did not make clear where all those eliminated jobs could come from.The Congressional Budget Office has said that nearly 60 percent of federal civilian workers are in the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security — but Mr. Ramaswamy did not mention cuts for any of them in his remarks on Wednesday or in additional materials from his campaign discussing the proposals.And while Mr. Ramaswamy named several agencies he said he would abolish, he added that he would move many of their functions to other organizations — suggesting that many of the same jobs would still exist elsewhere.Mr. Ramaswamy also said he would abolish the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which became a frequent target of Trump-style Republicans after it investigated ties between Russia and Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign.Mr. Ramaswamy, who has less than 10 percent support in primary polls, has pitched himself as the future of the Republican Party — a radical conservative in the image of Mr. Trump.His proposals on Wednesday reinforced the similarities between the former president and the political newcomer. They have both previously attacked specific agencies like the F.B.I. and large swaths of the civil service. Mr. Trump had also planned in a hypothetical second term to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, bring independent agencies under direct presidential control and purge officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”But Mr. Ramaswamy’s proposals went even further, envisioning a wholesale dismantling. He took a moment during his speech to revel in the incendiary nature of his proposals.“We’re going to get a lot of pushback to this speech,” he said. “I have no doubt about it.” More

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      Trump Plans to Expand Presidential Power Over Agencies in 2025

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      Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.He wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”Mr. Trump and his advisers are openly discussing their plans to reshape the federal government if he wins the election in 2024.Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times“The president’s plan should be to fundamentally reorient the federal government in a way that hasn’t been done since F.D.R.’s New Deal,” said John McEntee, a former White House personnel chief who began Mr. Trump’s systematic attempt to sweep out officials deemed to be disloyal in 2020 and who is now involved in mapping out the new approach.“Our current executive branch,” Mr. McEntee added, “was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It’s not enough to get the personnel right. What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”Mr. Trump and his advisers are making no secret of their intentions — proclaiming them in rallies and on his campaign website, describing them in white papers and openly discussing them.“What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” said Russell T. Vought, who ran the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump White House and now runs a policy organization, the Center for Renewing America.The strategy in talking openly about such “paradigm-shifting ideas” before the election, Mr. Vought said, is to “plant a flag” — both to shift the debate and to later be able to claim a mandate. He said he was delighted to see few of Mr. Trump’s Republican primary rivals defend the norm of Justice Department independence after the former president openly attacked it.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, said in a statement that the former president has “laid out a bold and transparent agenda for his second term, something no other candidate has done.” He added, “Voters will know exactly how President Trump will supercharge the economy, bring down inflation, secure the border, protect communities and eradicate the deep state that works against Americans once and for all.”The agenda being pursued by Mr. Trump and his associates has deep roots in a longstanding effort by conservative legal thinkers to undercut the so-called administrative state.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe two driving forces of this effort to reshape the executive branch are Mr. Trump’s own campaign policy shop and a well-funded network of conservative groups, many of which are populated by former senior Trump administration officials who would most likely play key roles in any second term.Mr. Vought and Mr. McEntee are involved in Project 2025, a $22 million presidential transition operation that is preparing policies, personnel lists and transition plans to recommend to any Republican who may win the 2024 election. The transition project, the scale of which is unprecedented in conservative politics, is led by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has shaped the personnel and policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan presidency.That work at Heritage dovetails with plans on the Trump campaign website to expand presidential power that were drafted primarily by two of Mr. Trump’s advisers, Vincent Haley and Ross Worthington, with input from other advisers, including Stephen Miller, the architect of the former president’s hard-line immigration agenda.Some elements of the plans had been floated when Mr. Trump was in office but were impeded by internal concerns that they would be unworkable and could lead to setbacks. And for some veterans of Mr. Trump’s turbulent White House who came to question his fitness for leadership, the prospect of removing guardrails and centralizing even greater power over government directly in his hands sounded like a recipe for mayhem.“It would be chaotic,” said John F. Kelly, Mr. Trump’s second White House chief of staff. “It just simply would be chaotic, because he’d continually be trying to exceed his authority but the sycophants would go along with it. It would be a nonstop gunfight with the Congress and the courts.”The agenda being pursued has deep roots in the decades-long effort by conservative legal thinkers to undercut what has become known as the administrative state — agencies that enact regulations aimed at keeping the air and water clean and food, drugs and consumer products safe, but that cut into business profits.Its legal underpinning is a maximalist version of the so-called unitary executive theory.The legal theory rejects the idea that the government is composed of three separate branches with overlapping powers to check and balance each other. Instead, the theory’s adherents argue that Article 2 of the Constitution gives the president complete control of the executive branch, so Congress cannot empower agency heads to make decisions or restrict the president’s ability to fire them. Reagan administration lawyers developed the theory as they sought to advance a deregulatory agenda.Mr. Trump and his allies have been laying out an expansive vision of power for a potential second term.Christopher Lee for The New York Times“The notion of independent federal agencies or federal employees who don’t answer to the president violates the very foundation of our democratic republic,” said Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, adding that the contributors to Project 2025 are committed to “dismantling this rogue administrative state.”Personal power has always been a driving force for Mr. Trump. He often gestures toward it in a more simplistic manner, such as in 2019, when he declared to a cheering crowd, “I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”Mr. Trump made the remark in reference to his claimed ability to directly fire Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel in the Russia inquiry, which primed his hostility toward law enforcement and intelligence agencies. He also tried to get a subordinate to have Mr. Mueller ousted, but was defied.Early in Mr. Trump’s presidency, his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, promised a “deconstruction of the administrative state.” But Mr. Trump installed people in other key roles who ended up telling him that more radical ideas were unworkable or illegal. In the final year of his presidency, he told aides he was fed up with being constrained by subordinates.Now, Mr. Trump is laying out a far more expansive vision of power in any second term. And, in contrast with his disorganized transition after his surprise 2016 victory, he now benefits from a well-funded policymaking infrastructure, led by former officials who did not break with him after his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.One idea the people around Mr. Trump have developed centers on bringing independent agencies under his thumb.Congress created these specialized technocratic agencies inside the executive branch and delegated to them some of its power to make rules for society. But it did so on the condition that it was not simply handing off that power to presidents to wield like kings — putting commissioners atop them whom presidents appoint but generally cannot fire before their terms end, while using its control of their budgets to keep them partly accountable to lawmakers as well. (Agency actions are also subject to court review.)Presidents of both parties have chafed at the agencies’ independence. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal created many of them, endorsed a proposal in 1937 to fold them all into cabinet departments under his control, but Congress did not enact it.Later presidents sought to impose greater control over nonindependent agencies Congress created, like the Environmental Protection Agency, which is run by an administrator whom a president can remove at will. For example, President Ronald Reagan issued executive orders requiring nonindependent agencies to submit proposed regulations to the White House for review. But overall, presidents have largely left the independent agencies alone.Mr. Trump’s allies are preparing to change that, drafting an executive order requiring independent agencies to submit actions to the White House for review. Mr. Trump endorsed the idea on his campaign website, vowing to bring them “under presidential authority.”Such an order was drafted in Mr. Trump’s first term — and blessed by the Justice Department — but never issued amid internal concerns. Some of the concerns were over how to carry out reviews for agencies that are headed by multiple commissioners and subject to administrative procedures and open-meetings laws, as well as over how the market would react if the order chipped away at the Federal Reserve’s independence, people familiar with the matter said.The former president views the civil service as a den of “deep staters” who were trying to thwart him at every turn in the White House.John Tully for The New York TimesThe Federal Reserve was ultimately exempted in the draft executive order, but Mr. Trump did not sign it before his presidency ended. If Mr. Trump and his allies get another shot at power, the independence of the Federal Reserve — an institution Mr. Trump publicly railed at as president — could be up for debate. Notably, the Trump campaign website’s discussion of bringing independent agencies under presidential control is silent on whether that includes the Fed.Asked whether presidents should be able to order interest rates lowered before elections, even if experts think that would hurt the long-term health of the economy, Mr. Vought said that would have to be worked out with Congress. But “at the bare minimum,” he said, the Federal Reserve’s regulatory functions should be subject to White House review.“It’s very hard to square the Fed’s independence with the Constitution,” Mr. Vought said.Other former Trump administration officials involved in the planning said there would also probably be a legal challenge to the limits on a president’s power to fire heads of independent agencies. Mr. Trump could remove an agency head, teeing up the question for the Supreme Court.The Supreme Court in 1935 and 1988 upheld the power of Congress to shield some executive branch officials from being fired without cause. But after justices appointed by Republicans since Reagan took control, it has started to erode those precedents.Peter L. Strauss, professor emeritus of law at Columbia University and a critic of the strong version of the unitary executive theory, argued that it is constitutional and desirable for Congress, in creating and empowering an agency to perform some task, to also include some checks on the president’s control over officials “because we don’t want autocracy” and to prevent abuses.“The regrettable fact is that the judiciary at the moment seems inclined to recognize that the president does have this kind of authority,” he said. “They are clawing away agency independence in ways that I find quite unfortunate and disrespectful of congressional choice.”Mr. Trump has also vowed to impound funds, or refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress. After Nixon used the practice to aggressively block agency spending he was opposed to, on water pollution control, housing construction and other issues, Congress banned the tactic.On his campaign website, Mr. Trump declared that presidents have a constitutional right to impound funds and said he would restore the practice — though he acknowledged it could result in a legal battle.Mr. Trump and his allies also want to transform the civil service — government employees who are supposed to be nonpartisan professionals and experts with protections against being fired for political reasons.The former president views the civil service as a den of “deep staters” who were trying to thwart him at every turn, including by raising legal or pragmatic objections to his immigration policies, among many other examples. Toward the end of his term, his aides drafted an executive order, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” that removed employment protections from career officials whose jobs were deemed linked to policymaking.Mr. Trump signed the order, which became known as Schedule F, near the end of his presidency, but President Biden rescinded it. Mr. Trump has vowed to immediately reinstitute it in a second term.Critics say he could use it for a partisan purge. But James Sherk, a former Trump administration official who came up with the idea and now works at the America First Policy Institute — a think tank stocked heavily with former Trump officials — argued it would only be used against poor performers and people who actively impeded the elected president’s agenda.“Schedule F expressly forbids hiring or firing based on political loyalty,” Mr. Sherk said. “Schedule F employees would keep their jobs if they served effectively and impartially.”Mr. Trump himself has characterized his intentions rather differently — promising on his campaign website to “find and remove the radicals who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education” and listing a litany of targets at a rally last month.“We will demolish the deep state,” Mr. Trump said at the rally in Michigan. “We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.” More