Former United States President, Donald Trump’s last-minute push to ‘burrow’ his loyalists into the Public Service is complicating the work of his successor, Joe Biden, to turn the page.
Mr Biden, showing a willingness to cut tenures short, has already dumped several high-profile, Senate-confirmed Trump appointees whose terms extended beyond Inauguration Day — in some cases by several years.
They include the Surgeon General, the National Labor Relations Board’s General Counsel and the heads of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Agency for Global Media.
However, other, lower-profile Trump loyalists, some of whom helped carry out his Administration’s most controversial policies, are scattered throughout Mr Biden’s Government in permanent, senior positions in a process known as burrowing.
Identifying them, let alone dislodging them, could be difficult for the new leadership.
The appointment of Michael Ellis, a former Republican Party official, as the National Security Agency’s top lawyer caused such a furore that he was placed on paid leave within hours of taking office.
In Mr Trump’s final weeks as President, dozens of other political appointees had their status similarly converted to permanent Public Service roles that would allow them to stay in Government for years.
These new career officials are protected from partisan removal unless the new Administration discovers that they got their jobs illegally — without competition and because of their political affiliation.
As Mr Biden tries to reset the Government to match his priorities, Democrats fear the Trump holdovers, who served in partisan roles, could undermine the new Administration as they move into the Public Service, which is supposed to operate free of partisanship.
Washington, 26 January 2020
