Trump’s way of cutting jobs could take the US in a dangerous new direction

US President Donald Trump takes questions during a press conference in Washington, DC, on February 4. AFP

It has begun. The second Donald Trump administration has opened with a remarkable flurry of executive orders and other measures that push the US in a drastically new direction. This includes a major effort to downsize the government, enforce a new ideology against diversity, equity and inclusion, transform relations with neighbours and partners, and, above all, fundamentally reshape the administrative bedrock.

This last experiment smacks of strongman politics, with measures to ensure that officials, including traditionally apolitical civil servants in mid-level positions who have typically been exempt from ideological litmus tests, are politically correct.

It is the first step towards transforming a genuinely democratic society based on the rule of law into an "illiberal democracy", in which the rule of law is replaced by the rule of men, and ultimately one man.

A DC resident holds a sign outside the FBI headquarters showing his support for the FBI and Department of Justice employees, days after the Trump administration launched a sweeping round of cuts at the Justice Department, in Washington, on February 3. Reuters

Mr Trump's supporters counter that the president must be served by loyal administrators who can be relied upon not to try to sabotage his agenda. The traditional American approach to this conundrum has been a wide latitude for presidents to appoint senior officials, including cabinet secretaries and White House staff.

At the end of his last term, Mr Trump created a new Schedule F, making virtually all administrators at-will employees who can be dismissed effectively without cause. This measure gave the White House unprecedented and, critics say, unwarranted, power over the entire bureaucracy along ideological lines. If even a junior civil servant is perceived as disloyal on any grounds, they can be summarily sacked, without recourse.

If Trump can deliver what the American people think they want, his radical innovations will likely be welcome, at least for a time

Former president Joe Biden immediately eliminated Schedule F, restoring the basic protections for civil servants. Mr Trump has wasted no time in reasserting this power, now called Schedule Policy/Career. By taking away due process rights from federal workers, the Trump administration has positioned itself for an unprecedented ideological purge of the bureaucracy.

In some crucial agencies, especially the FBI, the purge is already well under way. Last week, the Justice Department fired eight senior officials – including those overseeing national security, cybersecurity and counterterrorism.

This was followed by sweeping efforts to identify agents involved in investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection against Congress. FBI personnel received questionnaires, which they are required to answer immediately, interrogating any involvement in the sweeping investigation into the violent attack on the peaceful transfer of power.

The fate of FBI staff who did their jobs in investigating this extraordinary crime – the culprits of which, including those who attacked police officers, were all instantly pardoned by Mr Trump – remains to be seen. But this will certainly have its intended chilling effect.

The firing of over a dozen federal prosecutors involved in pursuing the criminal cases that were pending against Mr Trump before his election victory last November suggests that the personal and ideological purge is likely to be ruthless and sweeping.

All this is incompatible with assurances given under oath by Mr Trump's nominee to head the FBI, his arch loyalist Kash Patel, to Congress that there will be no ideological or political litmus tests at the FBI. At the absolute minimum, this is a signal that participation in law enforcement when it comes to Mr Trump and his supporters, even those involved in violent crimes against the police, Congress and the Constitution, is unacceptable and possibly unpardonable.

It creates an unprecedented zone of impunity around the president personally and politically. It is a direct attack on the rule of law, precisely targeting those empowered and entrusted with upholding and enforcing those laws.

Inevitably, these measures are being met with significant resistance. Unions representing federal employees are suing to restore due process rights to apolitical administrators. And the head of the FBI's New York field office, the centre of investigations of Mr Trump's pre-presidential activities, has described the Bureau as being in the midst of a "battle".

In a recent email James Dennehy told his colleagues it was time to "dig in," as "good people are being walked out of the FBI and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and FBI policy". He frankly wrote that the mass sackings of senior officials had created "fear and angst within the FBI ranks," adding that: "I mourn the forced retirements."

The FBI is hardly an isolated example. The US agency for international development, the primary arm through which the US provides humanitarian relief and spreads soft power around the world, is being apparently dismantled entirely.

Scores of administrators around the country who worked on diversity, equity and inclusion programmes have been placed on leave and face likely dismissal because of the sweeping rejection of such programmes by the new administration. In effect, if a civil servant had been assigned to work on a programme or initiative now seen as out of step with the administration, they are often being blamed personally and could pay the price.

We have seen this playbook before, both historically and in recent times around the world. It is now being attempted in the US. Thus far, the guardrails have proven useless and Mr Trump, enjoying his early victorious honeymoon, appears virtually unstoppable.

That may not continue. US Courts, in particular, may intervene to uphold democratic traditions. But the most important cases will reach a Supreme Court with a solid Republican and very right wing majority that may be tempted to side with Mr Trump.

Many of the justices, like Mr Trump's senior aides, are adherents of the "unitary executive" theory of US government, which holds that the individual person of the president has absolute and unquestionable power over all aspects of the executive branch, no matter how trivial or mundane. There are no exceptions, loopholes or exclusions. This decidedly non-traditional reading of the Constitution effectively renders the US with a temporary king, at least regarding all executive aspects of the government.

Most people everywhere don't spend much time fretting over constitutional processes and structures. They are invariably much more concerned with results. If Mr Trump can deliver what the American people think they want, his radical innovations will likely be welcome, at least for a time. If not, and he will be hard-pressed if he's going to war with the whole administrative structure, then this rapidly developing experiment in personalised governance and American autocracy will be remembered as a tragic wrong turn.