From the Democratic Party of Virginia:
ICYMI: Trump threatens federal workforce, calls civil servants “crooked” and “dishonest”
This week, in a YouTube interview, Donald Trump doubled down on firing civil servants, many of whom live in Virginia. When asked about his plans, as outlined in Agenda 47 and Project 2025, Trump did not hesitate to answer: “[Civil servants] are going to be held accountable. They’ve got to be held accountable. What they’re doing, they’re destroying this country. They’re crooked people. They’re dishonest people. They’re going to be held accountable.”
More than 140,000 Virginians who work for the federal government are at risk of losing their jobs if they are replaced by a MAGA loyalist or if their job is moved out of Virginia. Erich Wagner for GovExec examined the threat:
“Though Trump did not explicitly say how he would hold federal workers accountable during the interview, he has previously indicated that if elected this fall, he would revive Schedule F, an abortive plan from the end of his time in office to reclassify tens of thousands of federal employees in “policy-related” into the excepted service, effectively making them at-will employees.
Officials with Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign quickly tied Trump’s comments to Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led Republican transition project known as Project 2025, whose policy book also calls for Schedule F’s return.
Though Project 2025 entered the public consciousness due to a slew of unpopular proposals in the Heritage-produced book series, entitled Mandate for Leadership, a key objective of the initiative was to build a database of 20,000 potential political appointees for the next Republican president. The discrepancy between Project 2025’s recruitment goals and the roughly 4,000 federal jobs set aside for political appointees has raised concerns among Democrats and civil service experts that conservatives may be gearing up to stack previously non-partisan posts with Trump loyalists.”
Earlier this month, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin did not condemn Donald Trump and JD Vance’s plans to fire thousands of civil servants and move government jobs out of Virginia, rather he said, “There are fabulous opportunities for folks to find a new employer in Virginia should the one they work for move away.”
This week, The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press Editorial Board responded to Donald Trump and JD Vance’s plans to upend thousands of Virginia jobs and Glenn Youngkin’s weak and disappointing response
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