I’ll Take “Things That Won’t Happen” For $1000

Miller: He's going to rip up those agreements that allows those workers to “work” from home… we all know what the federal workers are really doing is absolutely nothing.. he's also going to say that workers who betrayed the trust of the American people are going to be fired. pic.twitter.com/oYdylDtuWk

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 4, 2025

No, he’s not.

The article is not a law review article on the topic, but the Pendleton Act of 1883 established the Civil Service, replacing the spoils system which had existed before. (Trump, in essence, wants to return to the spoils system.) The Pendleton Act was modified in 1978, to exempt from civil service anyone "whose position has been determined to be of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating character.” That has been interpreted as applying only to noncareer political appointments for the term of the administration. Such people are essentially “at will” employees.

Trump wants to use that loophole to place all civil service employees on Schedule F, so they could be fired at will. The law, however, doesn’t work that way.

This position … flies in the face of a canon of statutory interpretation that statutes should be read in a way that makes sense. If an interpretation of a law carves out an exception so large that it makes the law meaningless, that’s probably the wrong interpretation. That would be the case here: Reading the 1978 law in this way would effectively nullify the entire Pendleton Act.  

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In addition, firing 50,000 employees is a massive act that falls under the Supreme Court’s new “major questions” doctrine. [Trump’s interpretationA] is based on a very obscure, hitherto unnoticed provision of the law, it is a radical change from current practice, and it has a significant impact. This would mean, under conservative jurisprudence, that it is quasi-legislative in nature and not deserving of court deference. And as the late Justice Antonin Scalia memorably held, Congress “does not hide elephants in mouseholes.”

Giving the President the power to fire 50,000 employees at will is the definition of an elephant in a mouse hole. Trump’s order to put all civil service employees would run up against a regulation Biden just saw put into effect, one meant to keep Trump from changing all employees to Schedule F. It would take months to repeal that regulation. And if Trump did repeal the regulation, the effort to Schedule F all employees would be challenged in court, on the grounds I outlined (at least). It would probably spend a while there, and by that time Trump is facing a new Congress that might be inclined to further protect civil service workers.

And many of them do have contracts expressly allowing them to work from home. Trump can tear up copies of those contracts every day of his four year term. It won’t invalidate them.

Miller: He’s going to open up federal lands for drilling, for fracking, for clean coal and he is going to bring down the cost of energy. He's going to cut the price gasoline pic.twitter.com/oHoWfkvyQ7

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 4, 2025

That won’t happen, either. Biden already wrested control of the oil market from OPEC. Trump doesn’t understand that, and neither does Miller. Which means the price of gas is going to rise, not fall, unless Trump hires somebody who’ll explain it to him. Trump also tried to open federal lands to drilling once before. He didn’t get any takers. He won’t now, either.

And there’s no such thing as “clean coal.”