Trump administration to prioritize ‘patriotic Americans’ for federal jobs

As President Donald Trump moves to slash the size of the federal workforce, his administration unveiled a plan to ensure that any new hires are “patriotic Americans” who vow to advance the president’s policy priorities.

The White House and the agency that serves as the government’s human resources arm Thursday released directives for departments to use when recruiting employees in a memo that represents a dramatic shift in federal hiring procedures.

The administration’s “merit hiring plan” comes after Trump ordered a revamp to the federal hiring process on his first day in office. The resulting plan issued this week says it aims to ensure that “only the most talented, capable and patriotic Americans” are hired by the government.

The “overly complex Federal hiring system overemphasized discriminatory ‘equity’ quotas and too often resulted in the hiring of unfit, unskilled bureaucrats,” says the memo authored by Vince Haley, assistant to the president for domestic policy, and Charles Ezell, the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.

Trump and his allies have railed against civil servants, accusing them of working to undermine the president’s policy priorities. The new hiring plan will require job applicants to write short essays describing how they plan to advance Trump’s priorities.

Under the plan, all federal job vacancy announcements starting at the GS-5 pay grade or above will require short essay responses to questions about their commitment to the Constitution, how they plan to improve government efficiency, how they plan to advance Trump’s executive orders and policy priorities, and about their work ethic.

Critics called the requirements a loyalty test for the administration, while saying they could make future recruiting even harder.

“I think it’s foolish,” said Paul Light, professor emeritus of public service at New York University. “It’s hard enough to get talent these days.” Putting additional hurdles in the way of recruiting for government jobs at this point “ain’t a good thing,” he said.

It’s important to hire federal workers based on their skills, said Jenny Mattingley, vice president of government affairs at the Partnership for Public Service. But “asking every federal applicant to demonstrate work toward presidential policy priorities should not be part of the criteria."

“Many federal employees are air traffic controllers, national park rangers, food safety inspectors and firefighters who carry out the missions of agencies that are authorized by Congress,” she said. “These public servants, who deliver services directly to the public, should not be forced to answer politicized questions that fail to evaluate the skills they need to do their jobs effectively.”

The Trump plan also says it aims to limit the government’s focus on recruiting from “elite universities.”

The memo says hiring has focused too much on “elite universities and credentials” and says it will target new recruits from “state and land-grant universities, religious colleges and universities, community colleges, high schools, trade and technical schools, homeschooling groups, faith-based groups, American Legion, 4-H youth programs, and the military, veterans, and law enforcement communities.”

The administration also bars agency heads from using racial quotas and preferences in federal hiring, recruitment and promotion.

The memo directs agencies to “cease using statistics on race, sex, ethnicity or national origin, or the broader concept of ‘underrepresentation’ of certain groups” in decisions about hiring or promotions. It orders agencies to stop disseminating information about the composition of agencies’ workers based on their race, sex, color, religion or national origin.

The hiring plan also aims to speed up the federal hiring process in response to Trump’s order directing governmentwide hiring to be reduced to under 80 days.

Hiring senior executives

Also on Thursday, the administration issued a memo detailing hiring and talent development plans for leaders within the federal government’s career employee ranks known as the Senior Executive Service, or SES.

Trump issued a memo on the first day of his administration saying that because those officials “wield significant governmental authority, they must serve at the pleasure of the President.”

The new hiring memo criticizes SES hiring as a “broken, insular” process that has “resulted in the hiring of executives who engage in unauthorized disclosure of Executive Branch deliberations, violate the constitutional rights of Americans, refuse to implement policy priorities, or perform their duties inefficiently or negligently.”

Previous qualifications for SES hiring “included unlawful ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ (DEI) criteria for hiring Federal executives,” the memo says. The administration says it’s eliminating DEI factors in hiring for the service, and will focus on candidates’ efficiency, merit and competence, ability to lead, and ability to achieve results.

To build a pipeline of potential executive leaders, the memo says, OPM will provide an 80-hour intensive “fee-based aspiring executive development program” that’s “grounded in the Constitution, laws, and Founding ideals of our government, and will provide training on President Trump’s Executive Orders.”

That program is “designed to equip aspiring leaders with the skills, knowledge, technical expertise, and strategic mindset necessary to excel in senior leadership roles,” the memo says.