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From his home office in small-town Kentucky, a seasoned political operative is quietly investigating scores of federal employees suspected of being hostile to the policies of Republican\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a>, a highly unusual and potentially chilling effort that dovetails with broader\u00a0conservative preparations<\/a>\u00a0for a new White House.<\/p>\n Tom Jones and his American Accountability Foundation are digging into the backgrounds, social media posts and commentary of key high-ranking government employees, starting with the\u00a0Department of Homeland Security<\/a>. They\u2019re relying in part on tips from his network of conservative contacts, including workers. In a move that alarms some, they\u2019re preparing to publish the findings online.<\/p>\n With a $100,000 grant from\u00a0the Heritage Foundation<\/a>, the goal is to post 100 names of government workers to a website this summer to show a potential new administration who might be standing in the way of\u00a0a second-term Trump agenda<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 and ripe for scrutiny,\u00a0reclassifications, reassignments or firings<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to understand who these people are and what they do,\u201d said Jones, a former Capitol Hill aide to Republican senators.<\/p>\n The concept of compiling and publicizing a list of government employees shows the lengths Trump\u2019s allies are willing to go to ensure nothing or no one will block his plans in a potential second term. Jones\u2019 Project Sovereignty 2025 comes as\u00a0Heritage\u2019s Project 2025<\/a>\u00a0lays the groundwork, with policies, proposals and personnel ready for a possible new White House.<\/p>\n The effort, focused on top career government officials who aren\u2019t appointees within the political structure, has stunned democracy experts and shocked the civil service community in what they compare with the red scare of McCarthyism.<\/p>\n Jacqueline Simon, policy director at the American Federation of Government Employees, said the language being used \u2014 the Heritage Foundation\u2019s announcement<\/a> praised the group for ferreting out \u201canti-American bad actors burrowed into the administrative state \u2014 is \u201cshocking.\u201d<\/p>\n Civil servants are often ex-military personnel and are required to take an oath to the Constitution to work for the federal government, not a loyalty test to a president, she and others said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt just seems as though their goal is to try to menace federal employees and sow fear,\u201d said Simon, whose union backs President\u00a0Joe Biden<\/a>, a Democrat, for\u00a0reelection<\/a>.<\/p>\n As Trump, who has been\u00a0convicted of felony charges<\/a>\u00a0in a hush money case and is under a\u00a0four-count federal indictment<\/a>\u00a0accusing him of\u00a0working to overturn his 2020 election loss<\/a>, faces a likely rematch with Biden this fall, far-right conservatives have vowed to take a wrecking ball to what they call the deep-state bureaucracy.<\/p>\n The Trump campaign has said outside groups don\u2019t speak for the ex-president, who alone sets his\u00a0policy priorities<\/a>.<\/p>\n Conservatives view the federal workforce as overstepping its role to become a power center that can drive or thwart a president\u2019s agenda. Particularly during the Trump administration, government officials came under attack from the White House and Republicans on Capitol Hill, as his own Cabinet often raised objections to some of his more singular or even unlawful proposals.<\/p>\n While Jones\u2019 group won\u2019t necessarily be recommending whether to fire or reassign the federal workers it lists, the work aligns with Heritage\u2019s far-reaching Project 2025 blueprint for a conservative administration.<\/p>\n Heritage\u2019s\u00a0Project 2025<\/a>\u00a0proposes reviving the Trump Schedule F policy that would try to reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers as political appointees, which could enable mass dismissals \u2014 although\u00a0a Biden administration rule<\/a>\u00a0seeks to make that more difficult. The Heritage project is working to recruit and train a new generation to travel to Washington to fill government jobs.<\/p>\n In announcing the $100,000 Innovation Award last month, Heritage said it\u2019d support American Accountability Foundation\u2019s \u201cinvestigative researchers, in-depth reports, and educational efforts to alert Congress, a conservative administration, and the American people to the presence of anti-American bad actors burrowed into the administrative state and ensure appropriate action is taken.\u201d<\/p>\n Heritage President Kevin Roberts said the \u201cweaponization of the federal government\u201d has been possible only because of the \u201cdeep state of entrenched Leftist bureaucrats.\u201d He said he was proud to support the work of American Accountability Foundation workers \u201cin their fight to hold our government accountable and drain it of bad actors.\u201d<\/p>\n The federal government employs about 2.2 million people, including those in the Washington, D.C., area and workers who the unions say many Americans know as friends or neighbors in communities across the country.<\/p>\n About 4,000 positions in the government are considered political appointees who routinely change from one presidential administration to the next, but most are career professionals \u2014 from landscapers at Veterans Administration cemeteries to economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.<\/p>\n The public list-making conjures for some the era of Joseph McCarthy, the senator who conducted grueling hearings into suspected communist sympathizers during the Cold War. The hearings were orchestrated by a top staffer, Roy Cohn, who became a confidant of a younger Trump.<\/p>\n Skye Perryman, CEO of the advocacy group Democracy Forward, said it\u2019s deeply disturbing and reminiscent of \u201cthe darker parts of American history.\u201d<\/p>\n Publicly naming government workers is an \u201cintimidation tactic to try to chill the work of these civil servants,\u201d she said, and part of a broader \u201cretribution agenda\u201d underway this election.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re seeking to undermine our democracy,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re seeking to undermine the way that our government works for people.\u201d<\/p>\n Jones, from his desk overlooking rickhouses storing barrels in the Bourbon Capitol of Bardstown, scoffed at comparisons to McCarthyism as \u201cnonsense.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s a former staffer to then-Sen. Jim DeMint, the South Carolina conservative Republican who later led Heritage and now helms the Conservative Policy Institute, where American Accountability Foundation has a mailing address. Jones also worked for Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, and provided opposition research for Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz\u2019s 2016 presidential bid.<\/p>\n With six researchers, Jones\u2019 team operates remotely across the country, poring over the information about federal workers within Homeland Security, the State Department and other agencies that deal with immigration and border issues.<\/p>\n Their focus is on the highest ranks of the civil servants \u2014 GS-13, GS-14 and GS-15 employees and those in senior executive positions who could put up roadblocks to Trump\u2019s plans for tighter borders and more deportations.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s important to the next administration to understand who those people are,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n He dismissed the risks that could be involved in publicly posting the names, salary information and other details of federal workers who have some level of privacy or the idea his group\u2019s work could put employees\u2019 livelihoods in jeopardy.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t get to make policy and then say, \u2018Hey, don\u2019t scrutinize me,\u201d\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n He acknowledges some of the work is often a \u201cgut check\u201d or \u201cinstinct\u201d about which federal employees would be suspected of trying to block a conservative agenda.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re looking at, \u2018Are there wrong people on the bus right now that are, you know, openly hostile to efforts to secure the southern border?\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n His own group came under scrutiny as it first probed Biden nominees.<\/p>\n Biden had repealed Trump\u2019s Schedule F executive order in January 2021, but a Government Accountability Office report in 2022 found that agencies believed it could be reinstated by a future administration.<\/p>\n Since then, the Biden administration\u00a0issued a rule<\/a>\u00a0that would make it harder to fire workers. A new administration could direct the Office of Personnel Management to undo the regulation, but the process would take time and be open to legal challenges.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nA 21st-century \u2018Red Scare\u2019<\/h2>\n
Kneecapping the federal workforce<\/h2>\n
America\u2019s largest employer<\/h2>\n
Relying on a \u2018gut check\u2019<\/h2>\n