The BradCast w/ Brad Friedman
'BradCast' 9/4/2024 (Guest: Jacque Simon of AFGE on Trump/Project 2025 scheme to gut the civil service)
On today's 'BradCast': In Montana, Republican US Senate nominee Tim Sheehy was caught on tape making disparaging remarks about Native Americans, using racist tropes and derogatory stereotypes, at recent Republican fundraisers. A Sheehy win against incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester would flip control of the US Senate to Republicans. Montana's highest court rejected the GOP-controlled state legislature's voter suppression laws that harm Native Americans' right to vote. The far-right Project 2025 and Donald Trump himself have detailed plans to remove half a million civil service employees across dozens of federal agencies, replacing them with Trump loyalists, if the Trump/Vance ticket wins in November. JACQUELINE SIMON of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) explains the broad, disturbing ramifications of the scheme and how it would gut critical, non-partisan government operations across science, agriculture, healthcare, national security, education, energy, the military and more. Also today: a voting system problem in Massachusetts' primary was resolved with hand-marked paper ballots.
- Broadcast on:
- 04 Sep 2024
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- other
We should seize the institutions of the left and turn them against the left. We should just seize the administrative state for our own purposes. Fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state. Replace them with our people. Well, good to know your plan, JD Vance. I assume it's Trump's plan too. Spoiler, it is. ♪ I've got the feeling of something right ♪ ♪ I'm so scared and you kiss I fall off my chair ♪ ♪ And I'm wondering how I'll get downstairs ♪ ♪ The clouds to the left of me ♪ ♪ Joke us to the right, here I am ♪ ♪ Stop getting rid of it, here I am ♪ From Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles, this is the broadcast as heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA. Also in California in Red Bluff and Redding on KFOI and Round Mountains KKRN. Up in Oregon on the Central Coast on KYAQ, Carnage Grove's KSO and U-Gines, K-E-P-W. Landchester, Pennsylvania's W-News, Maui Hawaii's K-A-K-U. In Columbus, Ohio on WGRN, Palenville, New York's W-L-P-P. And Rochester, New York's WRFZ. Down in New Orleans on W-H-I-V, out in Gallop, New Mexico on K-N-I-Z, Concord, New Hampshire's W-N-H-N. Fayetteville, Arkansas's KPSQ in Seattle on K-O-D-X. Richmond, Virginia's WRW-K. Fairmont West, Virginia's W-E-F-R. Jamesville Wisconsin's W-A-D-R in Minneapolis, St. Paul's. A-M-950-K-T-N-F. We also stream coast to coast and around the globe every day on the Internet. Sun the Progressive Voices Channel, NetRoots Radio, Radio for Humans, to colesandler.com, Radio Free Brooklyn, No Lies Radio, D-Tour Talk and most of your favorite podcast sites, Blanketing Planet Earth. I'm Brad Friedman. Your friendly investigative blogger, journalist, troublemaker, Muckreker and all around Swell Fellows, says me from brandblog.com. Thank you very much for joining us today. Alright, coming up we will be joined by the Policy Director at the nation's largest federal employee union, representing some 750,000 federal workers. To get some insight into what you heard JD Vance going on about there at the top of the show, into both Donald Trump's plan and the Project 2025 plan to gut hundreds of thousands of career federal civil service workers and replace them with Trump loyalists. Should he be able to muscle his way back into the Oval Office this November? And by the way, even though Trump is trying to disavow Project 2025 as, you know, as if he knows nothing about it, does he go in? He hasn't heard. He hates it. That's what he says. He never lies. Yeah, he hates it. He knows nothing about it, but he knows that he hates it. Go figure. Anyway, if he, when he, as he tries to disavow it, keep in mind that A, that is, of course, a lie as the Project 2025 is put together by scores of people from his own administration and B, Trump already attempted to institute a policy that would have allowed him to fire hundreds of thousands of federal workers and replace them with loyalists in a scheme that was only stopped because he lost in 2020. And also see Trump's own campaign website right now has him vowing to quote, shatter the deep state before going on to promise to gut federal, the federal workforce. Jacqueline Simon will be joining us shortly with details on all of the above and more. But of course, speaking of this year's elections, as we almost always do, we noted on yesterday's program, the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts held its congressional and state legislative primary elections on Tuesday. And as expected, there were few, if any, surprises in the deep blue state. In fact, most of the candidates on the ballot on Tuesday ran unopposed entirely, including U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who, according to unofficial results reported today, will be running for a third term in office against Republican John Deaton, who won a three-way race to challenge Warren in November. And while she is expected to easily win in November, I will just remind you that when she originally won office back in 2012, she defeated Republican Scott Brown, Republican Senator at the time Scott Brown. He had won that seat after it was vacated with the death of longtime Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts. So it is not impossible for a Republican to win as a U.S. Senator there, but that was, of course, when Scott Brown won, it was amid the GOP fight against what would eventually become the very popular Affordable Care Act or Obamacare. And there were at the time a lot of angry, disinformed Republicans purposely terrified by the GOP with false information about Obamacare that it was going to steal your private insurance plans. It was going to take your doctors away, death panels. It would socialize the U.S. health care system. And of course, you know, kill your grandma with those death panels. Whatever happened to those. Anyway, I guess Republicans were what, making all that nonsense up? How unusual for them. In any event, as I said, no surprises to date from Tuesday's primary elections in Massachusetts, though I have received a report about a problem with, well, that initially appeared to be a problem with the optical scanners being unable to tally at least one statehouse race in the town of Essex that an astute brad blog follower brought to my attention today because it occurred where he lived. Thankfully, Massachusetts has enough respect for its voters that they are allowed to cast all of their votes on hand marked paper ballots. So officials were able to hand count the ballots in question as they did overnight on Tuesday and into Wednesday because they could not correctly be scanned by the scanners. So I've been trying to learn more about this throughout the day, but apparently, according to officials at the Secretary of the Commonwealth's office, there was a mistake in the order of the candidates on the Democratic primary ballot on some of the ballots that went out early in Essex. Apparently, the problem was discovered. The new ballots were printed, but that meant that all of the ballots for that race would have to be hand counted or the result reported by the scanners would mix up the two candidates whose places were switched on the ballot. Of course, that is just one of the reasons why it's so important that voters are allowed to vote on hand marked paper ballots. I will let you know if we learn more about what happened there, but I am grateful to listener Mike L who both alerted me to the issue and was able to get information from the state that was not reported by any of the local media on this issue. So kudos, Mike. Thank you very much. Well done, sir. Also noted yesterday, the final congressional primary day of the year will be next Tuesday in Rhode Island, Delaware and New Hampshire with both Delaware and New Hampshire also holding their primaries for governor and for other matters. So if you live in any of those three states, this is, once again, a fantastic chance to make sure that you are properly registered to vote for this November's election with, by the way, vote by mail balloting for the 2024 presidential election is finally and officially getting underway for reals this Friday, beginning in the great battleground state of North Carolina, believe it or not, where Harris and Trump are said to be deadlocked according to pre-election polling averages in a state that Trump won in both 2016 and 2020, but this year could go either way. It has been winnable for Democrats as recently as 2008, back when Barack Obama won the state, albeit very narrowly at the time. But yep, this election is finally happening, Des, like it or not. I am not ready for this. And well, you should be by now for crying out. Anyway, we will be covering it closely. We'll be covering both the horse race and the track conditions that the horses are running on, as always, both of them closely. First up, speaking of the US Senate, while Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are locked in a very close race, not just in North Carolina, but everywhere. And Democrats seem to believe they will be able to regain a majority in the US House this year. We'll see about that. The US Senate is a different matter, and it may be very difficult for Democrats to hold on to their currently very narrow 51-49 seat majority. With right-wing Democrat Joe Manchin retiring from the Senate this year, his seat is almost certain to flip from blue to red. That would, on its own, put the Senate at 50-50 at that point. And if if Democrats are able to hold all of the other seats that they're currently defending this year, the Democrats would be able to retain control of the majority in a 50-50 Senate if they win the White House, which would allow Vice President Tim Walts to become president of the Senate and the tie-breaking vote in a 50-50 Senate. However, if Democrats hang on to all of their current seats other than West Virginia, but also lose their seat in Montana this year, where three-term Democratic Senator John Tester is in a very tough battle to win another term, then Republicans would regain majority control of the upper chamber, making the path for progress by a Democratic White House much harder than it might be otherwise. And God knows what would happen if there is a Supreme Court Justice seat that comes up. There you go. Yeah. Thanks for making it even scarier, Dennis. You're welcome. But on the agenda itself, legislative agenda, as Jonathan Martin notes at Politico today, if that were to happen, if John Tester cannot hold on in Montana, Kamala Harris would be the first Democrat to enter the presidency since 1884 without majorities in both chambers if the Republicans are able to flip the Senate this year. So the story last week from the Char-Kusta News, which describes itself as the official news publication of the Flathead Indian Reservation, is actually, or potentially a rather important one that's being picked up today a few days later by major outlets where it is finally getting some coverage. As one of those outlets covering it, the Guardian in this case reports that a Republican candidate in a race that could decide control of the U.S. Senate made disparaging comments about Native Americans at campaign fundraising events last year. He did so repeatedly according to recordings disclosed in local media. Yes, the Char-Kusta News. Good on them. Tim Sheehee, the wealthy cattle rancher who moved to Montana some years ago and has been endorsed by Donald Trump in his bid to become Senator for Montana made the remarks repeatedly at a series of gatherings where he boasted of cultivating ties and bonding with members of the Crow reservation, the official home of the indigenous Crow tribe. In one clip, Sheehee has asked if he has been campaigning at Montana's various Native American reservations. This was, I believe, in November of last year. In Montana, indigenous tribes make up about 6% of the population. It is home to seven reservations, 12 different tribes. And Sheehee boasts about roping with the folks on the rez and writing in a parade on the Crow reservation where he said if they don't like you there, well apparently they throw beer cans at you. Yes, so I was already at the Crow Rez. One of our ranching is actually down the Crow Rez. So I wrote there every year with them. If you want a tough crowd when you're roping, roping the Crow Rez, you know? You missed that double kill shot as the crew is liking it on the side of your hand. Yeah, like below, you know. So, like, you know, it's a tough crowd, but, you know, wrote through their parade there in July or early August. Okay, so if they don't like you on the Crow Rez, they throw a can of a beer at you, I guess. Maybe it was just a joke that day. You could have said, you know, they throw a bottle of water at you or they throw a can of coke at your head, but that's not what he said. He said they throw a Coors light at your head. And as it turns out, the references specifically to a Coors light can being thrown at you on the Indian reservation. Well, similar comments were recorded at three different gatherings, according to the Char Couste News, which covers the flathead Indian reservation in Montana. But he specifically said Coors light, because, you know, that's what Indians do. Because, you know, well, they drink a lot, don't they, Tim? Six weeks after a long time, the first thing I did was I strapped a sheet. He signed to a horse and wrote through the Crow Rez parade. And if you know a tough crowd, you want to go to the Crow Rez. You know, they let you know when they're liking it or not. This Coors light can't slam by your head, it's driving a lot. But, you know, they respect that. You know, you go in the action and they say, okay, that's not it. That ain't it, huh? That ain't what's wrote through the parade. That's pretty cool. But not through a beer can. That didn't do a flinch. That guy. All right. Yeah, he's pretty cool. Through a beer can at his head, he didn't even flinch. And then Tim Sheehee, again, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, at yet another Republican fundraiser to a glorious laughter again, because, you know, how those Indians are with their beer while he made the same joke again. I wrote my horse right through the Crow Rez festival with signed strapped to me. And, you know, one of our ranching operations on the Crow Rez, or every year I'm down there, I wrote my grandmas on cows, I cut the bill, my own hay. And I tell you, if you don't make that double heel shot on the Rez, you know, the Coors light can't slam inside your head. They let you know right away. They let you know right away. Yeah, nice job, man. So it's a tough crowd. But I hopped on my horse for a right through their parade and said, yeah, I'm here. I'm a Republican. And I'm on this reservation telling you that I care about your issues. I ranch on your reservation. A lot of them don't care about your issues. I ranch on your reservations where you guys just love throwing Coors light cans at each other, because, you know, Indian. Now, to be fair, maybe Tim Sheehee was just telling it. Maybe he's just telling a joke about beer cans getting thrown at you. He didn't mean that as any kind of slight against Indians despite the old, very offensive trope about drunk Indians. Doesn't call native Americans seems called them Indians. Perhaps he didn't mean it that way at all. It was just a joke. You know, he could have said Coke, but he got in his head to Coors light, except then there was also this clip in which he told the story just a little bit differently in Shelby, Montana about ranching with a friend of his from the Crow reservation. Some of my best friends are from the Crow reservation. And, you know, he described it as a great way to bond with the Native Americans. But this time, and it's a little bit hard to hear, but he adds something else to the story. So I, um, my ranching partner, and I'm a really good friend, is a true story. Well, he's a, he's a Crow, and we ranching out on the Crow Res. Um, so I'm pretty involved down there. Wrote through their Crow Res, their annual Crow fair trade this year. Um, and I wrote with ran with them every year, you know, down there. So a great way to bond with all the Indians to be out there while they're drunk at 8 a.m. and you're roping the others. [laughing] Every hill shot you miss. You get a Coors light camera set. It's drunk in the AM. A great way to bond with all the Indians. If you get out there while they're drunk at 8 a.m. and you're roping together. That's not good. It seems to me. No. Uh, Desi, of course you have Native American background, uh, background heritage heritage. How does that, how does that bounce off of you? Like, uh, Coors Canada at 8 a.m. with all those drunk Indians? Yeah, I find it, uh, totally appalling and not at all surprising. I mean, for this, you know, this white Republican to be basically too faced. I mean, he's nice to them in person and then he is, you know, laughing at their expense behind their backs with all of these old racist tropes and derogatory stereotypes. I mean, and he's clearly speaking to a white audience because I really doubt he'd say that they do their faces on the Crow reservation. And they sure loved it though, at those four different times, at those, uh, Republican fundraisers, they thought it was hilarious. Yes, they did. Telling, isn't it? As the Guardian reports, uh, she, he is 37 years old. He's a former Navy SEAL. He moved to Montana just 10 years ago. He's trying to unseat, uh, John Tester, the incumbent in a contest viewed crucial to the Republican quest to retake control the Senate where Democrats have a narrow 51-49 majority revelation of his comments could undermine his efforts. However, according to the outlet, as previously noted, indigenous tribes make up 6% of the population of Montana and home to seven reservations and 12 tribes. Polls currently show the two party's candidates locked in a tight race with the most recent aggregate of 13 voter surveys published by the Hill, giving Shihi a three and a half point lead over Tester in a state that trends very heavily Republican. Donald Trump won there in 2020 by almost 20 points. Uh, how Tester keeps winning there year after year is, is incredible. We'll see if he can pull it off again. He, unlike Shihi, is a native born Montana who was trying to paint Shihi, uh, who has been in part bankrolling his own campaign as a wealthy outsider. GOP candidate's comments about crow members are seen as particularly embarrassing because the tribe has been seen as vociferously pro-Trump for some reason. Native Americans have been a key voter block for Tester in his three previous successful campaigns, but he has been warned that their support is not guaranteed. Calvin Lime, who lives on another indigenous reservation in the state called Shihi, his comments, quote, a slap in the face to crow members, quote, for them to bring him, uh, for them to bring him there, work with them. They're happy, they're promoting him, but behind closed doors, they're, they're the drunken Indian. He told the New York Times behind closed doors, you're actually getting looked at as a lesser than news of Shihi's comments is not the first potentially damaging episode of Shihi's campaign. Uh, last year he was also forced on the defensive after sexist and racist Facebook posts allegedly written by him came to light. Well, no wonder Republicans chose him to challenge Tester. Insider said the posts made between 2006 and 2008 and since taken down were, uh, quote, full of questionable photos and featured quote, lewd photos of women, a caricature of Middle Eastern people and homo erotic jokes. What? No drunken Indian jokes? He's quite the candidate. Well, the Crow reservation has a population of about 7,900 Native American voters. Um, all of the tribes combined could be decisive in that state if they are allowed to vote. As yes, Republicans have been for years trying to prevent them from doing in Montana. Earlier this year, the Montana Supreme Court ruled in favor of a collection of Native American politicians and tribes holding that two state laws that hinder Native American participation in the state's electoral process violate the fundamental right to vote under the Montana Constitution. One measure, uh, HB 176 would have ended election day registration. The other HB 530 aimed to prohibit paid third party ballot assistance, according to the ACLU, who represented the tribes. Native American voters living on reservations disproportionately rely upon election day registration and ballot assistance in order to cast votes in Montana. So naturally, Republicans there tried to make it harder for them to cast their votes. That is why, according to the ACLU in 2020, two Montana courts struck down a substantially similar measure to HB 530, finding the restriction on ballot collection disproportionately harmful to Native American voters in rural tribal communities. And in March of this year, the Montana Supreme Court found that both, uh, HB 176 and HB 530 disproportionately and unconstitutionally burdened the voting rights of Native Americans. And yet they, they continue to pass these laws over and over again. But the folks on the Crow rez are thinking in supporting this guy. Uh, I don't know. And any event, the decision back in March affirmed, uh, the September 22 decision, uh, from the 13th judicial district court in Montana, um, finding both of those laws unconstitutional. The plaintiffs were the Western Native voice, Montana Native vote, the Blackfeet Nation, Confederate, Solish and Kootenai tribes of the Flathead reservation, the Fort Belknap Indian community and the Northern Cheyenne tribe who filed suit, but not apparently the Crow reservation. Go figure. Uh, the, uh, plaintiffs hailed the ruling as a great victory back in March, yet another one that they've had to wage as Republicans continue to do this, try to disenfranchise Native American voters there. Uh, so we'll see if any of this makes a difference for she, he this November. Uh, but the results could mean nothing less than which party will control the majority for the next two years. And if Kamala Harris wins the White House, whether she'll be able to carry out her agenda at all, or if she will be blocked from day one by a Republican majority in the US Senate. And, uh, speaking of day one agendas, what could happen to our government and the federal workforce in 2025 asked the 750,000 strong American Federation of government employees in a press release last month before answering that question by saying a group of conservative organizations have a plan and it is not a good one for federal employees. The plan they note is detailed in a blueprint called Project 2025 organized by the far right heritage foundation backed by over a hundred right wing groups. The plan promises a takeover of our country's system of checks and balances in order to quote dismantle the administrative state. The operations of federal agencies and programs according to current law and regulations, including many of the laws and regulations that govern federal employment. So what would that mean for hundreds of thousands of career federal civil service workers who are not political appointees? Well, it ain't good. And it's not only Project 2025 vowing to cut hundreds of thousands of jobs from the civil service to be replaced, if at all, by Trump loyalists. It's also Donald Trump himself. Let's take a quick break and we'll talk about all of that and more with Jacqueline Simon of the American Federation of government employees. I'm Brad Friedman and you are listening to the Bradcast. Hey, this is Brad here at the Bradcast and Bradblog.com. We fight for election integrity all year around like no other media outlet in the nation. But of course, we need your help to help us remain on your public airwaves and completely independent. Please help us continue that fight over your public airwaves by stopping by Bradblog.com/donate. And thanks. [MUSIC] Welcome back to the Bradcast, Brad Friedman from Bradblog.com. It took the assassination of a president in 1881 to finally end what had long been the cozy back scratching world of U.S. presidential appointments known as the spoils system. A man named Charles Gato believed that he would finally make his mark with the government position based on his work for the Republican party after the election of James A. Garfield, the 20th president of the United States. He became convinced that Garfield would acknowledge his support of the party and recognize it with a plum position in the U.S. civil service. He zeroed in on an assignment at the U.S. consulate in Paris, though he had no experience whatsoever in the foreign service. The U.S. operated for much of its earlier years and into most of the 1800s on the understanding that individuals won jobs with the government not by proving their expertise but by having connections to presidents and their parties. Garfield was a former civil war general whose problem with the spoils system went well beyond Gato. Garfield quickly took a stand after entering the White House by challenging a powerful U.S. senator and influence peddler who thrived on such patronage. The system, at the time, even required those rewarded with jobs to kick some of their salaries back to their political parties. But Gato's appointment never came. He became infuriated and began stalking the president. Garfield had been in office for about four months when Gato fired two shots that mortally wounded the president as he walked through a Washington train station. Gato fantasized that a sympathetic country would revere him for his actions. Instead, he was hanged for murder. Congress, about 18 months after Garfield's assassination, moved to finally eliminate the spoils system in 1883 after the disgruntled job seeker assassinated the man that he believed had owed him a government appointment. Garfield's successor, President Chester A. Arthur, signed the Pendleton Act, which replaced the spoils system with a federal civil service made up of career employees. It required minimum qualifications and forbade political kickbacks and eventually would lead to objective testing for many job applicants in the system of federal workers that we now know today. The next 22 presidents would leave that basic principle of the civil service intact at least until Donald Trump took office. In past statements and an executive order issued while he was in office, Donald Trump demonstrated that he hopes to exert control over a huge swath of the government workforce. Not merely the roughly 4,000 employees traditionally subject to presidential appointments, but as the notorious 900-page Project 2025 manifesto created by about 100 Republican-aligned think tanks and scores of former Trump administration officials' promises, about 500,000 career civil service employees could be replaced with a spoils system-styled Trump loyalist program if he regains the White House this fall. After one term as President, which has promised to remake the massive federal government mostly came up short, Trump again is raining fury on the "deep state" pledging that if he is elected in November, he will replace career civil servants with his like-minded allies. If Trump and Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance were to succeed in remaking the federal workforce in the way they have described it, it would be the most radical reconfiguration of the U.S. government in 140 years. "You're now talking about 140 years of presidential administrations, Republican and Democrats who all supported the proposition that the best way to get an effective government was to have a career, professional, merit-based civil service," said Max Steyer, the President of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that analyzes federal agencies and their employees in an interview with James Rainey of the L.A. Times recently. "So the idea that we would convert that or return to a 19th-century-style spoil system is a huge anomaly. It is a radical change," said Steyer. But Trump has made clear he does not intend to be dissuaded by those who have worked within the government before. The Republican presidential candidate recently offered his emphatic endorsement of a house cleaning when a YouTube personality asked whether he would restore trust in government by holding federal workers accountable. "How are you going to gain the trust back of the American people within the government and are we going to see anybody held accountable?" The answer is yes on the second. They're 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. They're crooked people. Who are they? Why are they crooked? And who exactly will be held accountable and for what? The disgraced former president has made clear his disdain, for example, for the FBI, federal prosecutors and others who investigated him over his efforts to steal the 2020 election, among other things. But he has said little about others that he might consider, quote, "crook it" or which agencies and job categories he would target in the federal workforce. Would those ousted include scientists and engineers who support clean energy programs like wind and solar power and electric vehicles that Trump has ridiculed? Would economists at the non-partisan Bureau of Labor Statistics find themselves on the street if they were to produce numbers that the businessman did not like as president? Trump's vice presidential running man, J.D. Vance, appears to share the view of that those who enter civil service for the U.S. government should be replaced. As a Senate candidate, he told a podcaster back in 2021 while speculating that Trump was likely to run again in 2024 and win that time, that largely the entire civil service should be removed and, in his words, replace them with our people. And if the courts tried to stop Trump, well, he should simply defy the federal courts. We should just seize the administrative state for our own purposes. We should fire all of the people. I mean, you know, like, I think that what Trump should do, like if I was giving him one piece of advice, fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people. And when the courts, because you will get taken to court and then when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say the chief justice is made is ruling now, let him enforce it. Wow. In the waning months of his tenure in office back in 2020, Donald Trump tried to do exactly that. He created a category of employees that should be placed on a new so-called schedule F that would classify them as at-will employees who can be fired at any time for any reason. But Trump left office before schedule F could be completed and veteran civil servants rejected. Now, some analysts have estimated that schedule F could threaten the positions of tens of thousands of workers. The American Federation of Government Employees or AFGE representing some 750,000 workers across many unions said that the Trump policy would erase employee protections for up to half a million senior managers, high-level technical specialists, physicians and others. Those senior workers would not only lose collective bargaining rights laid out in law, but the change according to Jackie Simon, the Federation's public policy director would quote, "eviscerate the apolitical merit-based system that we have today and replace it with a corrupt spoils system." Yes, just like the one that we did away with nearly 150 years ago. Joining us now is Jacqueline Simon, who represents AFGE on all policy matters affecting the union's members, including civil service protections, collective bargaining, privatization, pay, health insurance, retirement and budget. Jackie Simon, thank you for joining us today on the broadcast. Thank you for having me. So, before we get into the threats promised by Project 2025, which Trump has tried to disavow, it seems that by his own words and actions, even as President, that he intends to do what Project 2025 essentially calls for as evidenced at the very least by this schedule F executive action that he put in place as President to potentially categorize tens of thousands of career federal workers as at-will employees who can be fired at any time. So, what type of government workers would potentially be affected become fireable without cause, I guess, as Schedule F employees? Well, before I answer that question directly, I do want to say that while Schedule F itself is horrible and it's everything you've described it to be, in some ways it's just the logical conclusion of something that's been going on in the federal government now for many years, and that is to take more and more federal jobs out of the competitive service. What we are referring to when we talk about the apolitical professional civil service and allow direct appointment to positions. Now, Schedule F is a little bit different from that because they truly are at-will, can be fired for any reason or no reason. And, of course, the flip side of being able to be fired for any reason or no reason is a hiring process that would not subject people to the kinds of assessments that are part of the merit system. All these jobs are called accepted service. They're supposed to be the exception to the rule, which is the competitive service. And the competitive service is based on this idea that all Americans should have a right to an opportunity to apply for and compete for any federal job that they have the qualifications for, that they can perform those duties. And when you take competition out of it and just do direct appointments, you're on the road already to Schedule F. And so much hiring right now is already performed that way. And so, you know, wait, this is just the sort of final dagger in the heart of the civil service. But the civil service has been under tremendous threat for a long time by all these alternative hiring processes. And, well, anyway, but just to go back, I mean, I don't know how much you want me to talk about Schedule F. Well, I was interested in one of the points you made in particular that these workers who could be placed into Schedule F would lose their collective bargaining rights that are laid out by law. I mean, how can that be? Can an executive order, which is not a law simply removed, you know, the right for these federal workers to be represented by a union? Oh, definitely. But that's hardly the only group of federal employees that Project 2025 would strip of bargaining rights. In the chapter on the Department of Homeland Security, for example, the Ken Kuchanelli, former Secretary and former Virginia State official, he's the author of that particular chapter. He proposes to exploit the national security loophole in the law to exclude all the groups of federal employees in DHS that don't usually support Donald Trump. So that would be FEMA, transportation security officers, the airport screeners, you know, and people who work for CIS who process immigration applications and so on. They also, of course, propose to privatize all of TSA. Yeah, go back to pre-9/11 and just have everything completely privatized. They don't want a professional airport screening workforce. They want to go back. And I think that, you know, I think a good way to look at the outline of what government would look like according to Project 2025, you know, they've got three ways of ruining the government. One is the one you're talking about right now, which is politicizing the work of people who are right now performing all kinds of functions that you described in your intro, scientific research, the sort of research that underlies regulations that protect public health, clean air, clean water, safe food, all of those kinds of things. They want to get rid of everything, move things to the states or privatize or defund. Those are their major ways and those efforts can also be avenues to politicize the work of the federal government. When you privatize, you can specify exactly what the contractor will do and won't do. And kind of, you know, go on. Well, no, I mean, can this all be done at the presidential level? In other words, for example, Trump's specific targets remain hazy, notes the LA Times, but the Project 2025 report suggest a few of the type of folks who might be laid off. One would be, for example, workers in the clean energy core project that was launched under the bipartisan infrastructure law to improve distribution of electricity from sources. But Project 2025 calls that a partisan political agenda and calls for eliminating all positions and personnel hired under that program. But isn't that program, isn't that the law? How do they work around the law to do this? First of all, that's really small potatoes. When you're talking about the plans laid out in Project 2025, you know, they would take all testing development and testing away from the CDC. They would really, really deregulate the inspection of meat and poultry that's performed right now in the Department of Agriculture, you know, completely privatize the work that's done by civilians in the Department of Defense at depots and arsenals where weapon systems are maintained and repaired so that the government would be fully, fully at the mercy of its contractors. And then, you know, the biggest part of our union, over a third of the membership of our union works for the Department of Veterans Affairs. And there are already two laws on the books that, you know, it depends on how broadly or narrowly the laws are interpreted. They make no bones about the fact that they would effectively shut down the VA healthcare system and privatize all of that. They would close hospitals and clinics all across the country and basically turn the VA into a, you know, a private health insurance program. I mean, there's so many ways that the operations of government and the functions of government would be corrupted, undermined, politicized by privatization and by, of course, this personnel system that would allow them to hire people who aren't competent, who don't, can't perform the duties of the position, and then hire them and fire them at will. And well, when I was asking about the Clean Energy Corps, it was not because it was the, you know, the most terrifying thing in this terrifying plan, but rather because it was a part of a bipartisan law, the bipartisan infrastructure law, and I'm just trying to understand, is this a matter of you had cited the national security loophole? Is this something that they can cite to just basically say, well, never mind the law, we're going to do what we want to do? Or is this more like what JD Vance said? Is it, you know, hey, if you don't like it, take us to court and if the court, even if the court tells us we can't do it, you know, you and what army, as they say. I'm trying to figure out how they do this by regulation as opposed to law. Are you an attorney today here at the opening? You did not, although I've been accused of that in the past. All right. Well, the Supreme Court recently issued a very, very bad decision having to do with the authority of executive branch agencies to interpret laws through the development of regulations. Prior to that decision, a law that you're, like the one you're talking about, would be in order to implement it, it would require regulations that would instruct the agency on how, how, how the law would be implemented. And since that authority has been constricted, shall we say, tremendously by that Supreme Court decision, when you ask questions like, well, wait a second. They passed the law. They have to be able to implement the law. You know, there's many, many, many ways to, to interpret the language of a law in a narrow way or a broad way. They can write regulations that restrict, you know, what, what can be done and can't be done and how it's done. So, you know, having the ability to subvert laws passed by the Congress is, is very much within the president's purview. They also have what they call this unitary executive theory that also interprets the powers of the president to be so far reaching that, that a president could do anything he wants, as we now know, with impunity. And, and part of the interpretation of that law, or that concept, is that all federal employees should be at will and that the everybody in the executive branch should be as effectively a political appointee, answerable to the president and answerable to the president's political agenda. Yeah, you know, and another thing, you know, besides schedule F that, you know, it would be extremely problematic. However many people are actually, it's not people, it's positions. However many positions are reclassified as schedule F. What would affect every federal employee is a new pay system that's based on performance appraisals, like a pay for performance system, and they would make adherence to President Trump's agenda, either the most important factor or a very important factor in evaluating somebody's performance and deciding whether they'd get a pay raise or not. Now, right now that would pretty much require them to change the law, but they do have the ability to, to determine how performance appraisals will happen. And, and they can pretty much decide based on those kinds of performance appraisals, how anybody's career would develop, whether you would ever move up the chain, you know, any kind of career ladder, or whether you'd be just stuck at the bottom. If you have been found to be, you know, inadequately enthusiastic about Donald Trump. And it sure is beginning to sound a lot more like the spoil system of the 1800s when you described it that way. Now, you mentioned earlier, Jackie Simon, that jobs are being shipped from D.C. to elsewhere. I know that during Trump's first term, he did something like that. And on his own website, this is not Project 2025, which he's tried to disavow, but on his own website, he says, quote, on day one, he will reissue the 2020 executive order, restoring the president's authority to fire road bureaucrats. He says, I quote, I will shatter the deep state and restore government that is controlled by the people. And he goes on to promise, quote, up to 100,000 government positions could be moved out of Washington. He, as I said, he did something like this during his first term with the Bureau of Land Management, the USDA, moving them to Colorado and Kansas City. What was the purpose of that? And what is the hope of moving these positions up to, you know, 100,000 people as he vows on his own website? What's the purpose of moving them out of D.C. and elsewhere into the country? Well, I think it's to, that's really kind of a rhetorical thing. It tries to get, put some, you know, meat on the bone of their claims that, you know, Washington is this swamp of corruption. And, and the rest of the United States is, is, you know, full of real Americans where people in Washington, D.C. aren't. And so if you would move these government programs and government agencies, headquarters elsewhere in the United States, somehow, you know, those jobs would be taken by, by real Americans rather than the people who live in cities. And, but one of the things people don't realize is that 85% of the federal workforce works outside of the Washington metropolitan area. You know, most of the federal employees, the big concentrations of federal employees work on military bases and then VA facilities. You know, we've got a lot of agencies. There are people doing federal government work all over the country. There are laboratories. There are offices all over the country doing, you know, various, the works of various agencies. You know, we've got Department of Labor, HUD, Social Security Administration, you know, Social Security offices, et cetera, et cetera. But this idea that, yeah, maybe he wants to move the Pentagon. It's headquarters mostly in the Washington area. That's, it's basically agency headquarters. And, you know, they get called all the time to Capitol Hill to testify. And so, you know, if everybody spread out all over the country, who are the kinds of, who occupy the kinds of positions, political positions, for the most part, you know, secretaries, under secretaries, deputy, under secretaries, et cetera. They're the people who Congress wants to hear from on a regular basis. They have to travel back to DC for a hearing. You know, it's just, it's inefficient. You know, those little examples that happened in the, in the, his previous term, you know, what ended up happening was most people who had those jobs didn't leave. You know, they had spouses with jobs and kids in school and, you know, what have you. And they weren't going to just completely uproot their entire families because of the whims of Donald Trump. And so, we ended up losing a lot of institutional knowledge, I suspect, on the market. Yeah, I mean, these were economists at the department, you know, agricultural economists who were, you know, their work was relocated. And of course, you know, they're also fighting right now, you know, remote work and people's ability to telework. I mean, I think that it might be a different kind of situation. Now, if you move a lot of these jobs elsewhere, they could still be performed by people living wherever, given, you know, the technological advances that have allowed people to perform their jobs, you know, for many place. But they don't want that either, of course, because they think if you're not, you know, the boss isn't watching you, you aren't working. Well, yeah. And of course, if they send these people out around the country and they can't go, they get replaced by loyalists, which is exactly what they're calling for. Before I let you go, Jackie Simon, the architects of Project 2025 have said that they've gone out of their way to describe this as a policy blueprint, not only for Donald Trump, but for whoever the next Republican may be to enter the White House. Would you expect that this effort would continue into the future, even if Trump ends up losing the election again this year, is this something we have to keep an eye on year after year at this point? The answer, emphatically, is yes, because it's been the Republican playbook for decades. This isn't no. This is Ronald Reagan moving forward. And so almost everything in this document has either been tried before or is part of Republican Dog, Republican agenda in Congress for decades. So it's not a lot of it is no. I should also note before I let you go that the 750,000 member strong AFGE recently endorsed Kamala Harris for president. I think we know what you don't like about Donald Trump. But beyond that, well, what does your group like about Harris? Why does she win the AFGE endorsement? Well, when she was in Congress, when she was a senator, she had an extremely pro AFGE voting record. We keep track of the votes of members of Congress and see how they vote on bills that are of importance to our membership. And she had a, I don't know if she had a 100% voting record, but it was probably close to that. And you can, you know, you heard her this weekend in Pittsburgh and then Detroit talking about her support for organized labor and her understanding along with President Biden that unions built America and unions built the middle class. And a recognition of that fact has led to her sort of longstanding support for labor unions and collective bargaining. She also headed an effort by the Biden administration to see what they could do through, you know, by executive action, but they didn't need Congress. Anything that could be done to promote, you know, worker empowerment and increases in union membership. And so she's just got a very, very good record when it comes to organized labor. And we were, there was absolutely no, nobody opposed her having AFGE endorsed her. Although we, we love Joe Biden. There you go. And he will be missed. But he's still around for a while. Jacqueline Simon is the policy director of the American Federation of government employees or AFGE, which is part of the AFL CIO and the largest federal employee union representing some 750,000 federal and district of Columbia employees. You can find their work at AFGE.org or on the site still known as Twitter at AFGE National Jackie Simon. Really appreciate you joining us today. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. You bet. Thank you. Okay. Got to get out. I'm glad we were able to get to at least some of that. Boy, it's no easy feat covering a 900 page manifesto. No, it's not. And there's so much in there that it's, it's kind of mind blowing, but they have planned for everybody. Yeah, so much in there that still is not being adequately covered. I think people have heard, oh, they're going to shut down to the Department of Education. But that is just one part of it. Yeah. And it's also in Trump's agenda 47 as well. So don't let us know. Okay. I got nothing to do with 2025. Yeah. All right. We got to get out. My thanks again to Jackie Simon, to my producer, Desi Doyle, and to all of you for spending a portion of your day or night with us. It's always greatly appreciated. If you missed any portion of today's program, please feel free to stop by Brad blog.com and download it or share it with your friends, your family, your enemies. That is made possible by those of you kind enough to donate button at Brad blog.com or who just go straight to Brad blog.com/donate. Thank you in advance. Drop me email. I'm Bradcast@bradblog.com on the Facebook's Mastinons and sites still known as Twitter. I am the Brad blog. We'll see you there until we see you here next time. I'm Brad Friedman. Good luck world. [music] You're listening to the Bradcast. We are 100% listener supported thanks to listeners like you who drop by Brad blog.com/donate. (upbeat music)