Former President Trump plans in remarks delivered Saturday night in Florida to tout his executive order “Schedule F” — and call on Congress to give the president more power to fire federal employees, according to extracts obtained by Axios.
- The former president’s new strike against federal workers follows Jonathan Swan’s two-part Axios investigative series, “Inside Trump ’25,” which reveals his allies’ plans to make the issue a focal point if he wins a second term. .
Why it matters: By directly raising Schedule F, Trump is bolstering plans by well-funded outside allies to purge career officials if he returns to power.
- “To drain the swamp, we have to fire the swamp,” Trump plans to tell a turning point in Tampa, according to the extracts.
- In the speech, Trump will say he wants new presidential powers to “ensure that any bureaucrat who is corrupt, incompetent or unnecessary can be told, ‘You’re fired!'”
Between the lines: Schedule F, which was withdrawn by President Biden on his second day in office, was virtually unknown to the general public. Now Trump is trying to make it a major line of applause, as speculation mounts that he will announce a run in 2024.
context: Trump’s main allies, the Axios series reports, are preparing to radically reform the federal government if he is re-elected. They plan to purge potentially thousands of officials and fill career posts with loyalists to him and his “America First” ideology, people involved in the discussions tell Swan.
- Another expert from the speech reads: “With Schedule F, I have taken executive action to make it possible to fire federal employees who circumvent our democracy to promote ‘wokeism’ and corruption.”
- “We now need Congress to make historic reforms to permanently empower the president to eradicate the ‘deep state’.”
Read Jonathan Swan’s series on the complicated planning for a second Trump term, including more intensive use of Schedule F forces: Part 1 … Part 2 … Schedule F explanation.