Conservative-linked groups are working hand in hand to detect and purge "Department of Homeland Security (DHS) bureaucrats" who could pose opposition in a second Donald Trump administration.
In May, the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) received a $100,000 grant from the Heritage Foundation as part of an initiative called Project Sovereignty 2025 "aimed at exposing and building a database of bureaucrats in the Department of Homeland Security, as well as other departments and agencies, who are the architects and advocates of the Biden administration's disastrous open-borders policies."
Yitz Friedman, spokesperson for the AAF, told Newsweek via email on Monday that the project began in May and that results are expected to be published online by late summer.
Donald Moynihan, a policy professor at Georgetown University and chair at the McCourt School of Public Policy, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) in response to the motives of Heritage and AAF that "the future is terror."
He wrote that the ideological purges are now a central part of the GOP's governing doctrine, and that "there is not equivalent energy in fighting back from the center or the left."
The AAF is on the advisory board of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, which was published in August 2023 and has received scrutiny from political opponents due to the conservative think tank's political action plan that could lead to easier termination of federal workers.
Other potential consequences of Project 2025 include prosecution for distributing abortion pills by mail, and abolishing recently established diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at the Department of Defense (DOD).
Rachel Greszler, senior research fellow at the Roe Institute, wrote in an article for the Heritage Foundation that the eligibility age for collecting Social Security retirement benefits should be raised to 70 to help address the impending funding cliff faced by the Social Security Administration (SSA).
A GOP reclaiming of the White House could also result in fortifying a plan to reintroduce Schedule F, a Trump-era executive order rescinded by President Joe Biden that would see tens of thousands of federal workers reclassified, making them easier to fire.
The AAF said that federal workers who mainly work behind the scenes are the ones being reviewed and identified.
"AAF will be highlighting those in the federal bureaucracy who, although their faces don't appear on TV, and most Americans have never even heard their names, are responsible for the current crisis," they said in May upon receiving the Heritage grant.
"Shining a light on these individuals is vitally important, as, if allowed to remain in their positions operating in the shadows, they can be expected to obstruct any future president's effort to fix the problem and secure the border."
Moynihan told Newsweek via email on Monday: "The civil service was created to avoid these types of ideological purges. People can be fired for poor performance, but not for their political beliefs.
"Turning the government into a workplace where employees have to worry that they can get fired because opposition researchers are investigating them is going to make it harder to recruit and retain qualified employees. The result will be that the quality and competence of government will decline."
AFF is headed by Tom Jones, a routine face on Capitol Hill for more than two decades whose legislative work extended to Republican Senators Ron Johnson and Jim DeMint—the latter of whom left the U.S. Senate in 2013 to become president of the Heritage Foundation and later was fired in 2017.
Jones told The Associated Press that AAF is currently researching backgrounds, social media posts and commentary of key high-ranking government employees, with the DHS acting as a starting point.
He and other AAF staffers are relying on conservative contacts and resources in assembling the list, with a goal of 100 names to be made public.
"We need to understand who these people are and what they do," Jones told the AP.
More than 2 million people worked for the federal government in all 50 U.S. states and territories as of March 2023, according to the Congressional Research Service. Most federal workers were employed within the District of Columbia, followed by California, Virginia, Texas and Maryland.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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