Freedom

By Matt Lamb

President-elect Donald Trump reportedly wants to fire thousands of federal workers. He has also suggested a cost-cutting commission led by Tesla founder Elon Musk, which presumably would include firing government employees.

There are a few they should start with to combat the weaponization of the federal government, most prominently by the Department of Justice.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, who is obviously going to be fired, oversaw a memo that encouraged federal law enforcement to treat parents and concerned citizens as criminals if they objected to racial and sexual content in classrooms and school libraries.

But he did not act alone. Rather, it is safe to assume that at least dozens of DOJ underlings helped compile the memo, including in coordination with the National School Boards Association. All must go to restore trust in the federal government.

The same goes for anyone who helped Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke target a pro-life father with an early morning raid for peaceful actions outside of an abortion facility. Ditto for anyone who slow-walked investigations into the hundreds of pro-life groups and churches that were attacked after the leaked Dobbs decision.

While Trump and Musk are searching around the Justice Department, they should also find out who decided not to charge protesters who tried to intimidate Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices outside of their houses. 

We know the FBI has resources to go after people it considers threats. After all, FBI agents, with the blessing of a bureau attorney in Richmond, signed off on a memo to target Catholics who prefer the Latin Mass. The bureau did this based on one wacko who attended the Latin Mass along with a magazine story and reporting from the biased Southern Poverty Law Center.

The memo cited an Atlantic article that claimed the rosary prayer beads used by many Catholics are an “extremist symbol.” Anyone who willingly participated in that memo must go. The same for any other intelligence analysts who continue to cite the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center in their work.

Bureaucrats who removed even minimal safety standards for abortion pills should also go. If the Food and Drug Administration had not rewritten federal regulations, at least one woman in Georgia might still be alive today. But the FDA relaxed the requirement for women to see a doctor as a condition of obtaining the abortion pills, and Candi Miller is now dead. 

There will be some obstacles along the way, due to civil service hiring and firing laws. President Joe Biden’s team has worked to protect policymaking government employees from being fired by Trump. 

The incoming president previously tried to reclassify tens of thousands of workers as political appointees, who could be more easily fired. The current White House has sought to prevent those changes from being reenacted.

Some of these government employees may have just been doing their jobs and not played a substantial or willing role in the egregious actions cited. That can be up to Musk and his team to sort through — after all, the guy cut about 80% of X employees without any major disruptions. He can figure this situation out, too. 

For example, the White House could reassign bad workers to undesirable federal jobs. Maybe there is a Department of Agriculture test farm that needs someone to clean up pig manure. Trump just needs to be creative and unburdened by what has been.

Matt Lamb is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is an associate editor for the College Fix and has previously worked for Students for Life of America and Turning Point USA.