Trump's vow of 'retribution' has government workers anxious: report

Former President Donald Trump aims to exact revenge on those he blames for the failures of his last administration — and federal workers are worried they're in his crosshairs.

Civil service employees, who were on the receiving end of years of "Deep State" conspiracy theories devised byTrump and his supporters, are anxious about their futures, reported NBC News on Wednesday.

The former president has vowed "retribution" for his political enemies if he's re-elected, saying "their reign is over," the report said.

"Max Stier, the president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization dedicated to an effective federal government, said such proposals and the broader push among Republicans to fundamentally change how the civil service works are causing 'quite a bit of anxiety in the federal workforce and in the broader community of organizations that are focused on trying to help our government work more effectively,'" NBC News reported.

"He added that there is 'a lot of uncertainty' about what could be achieved merely through executive action and what would require congressional buy-in."

When Trump was last in office, he did a lot of things to shake up the civil service, including relocating the headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management from Colorado to Washington, D.C., uprooting the lives of many government workers and their families.

More significantly, just before leaving office, Trump was instituting a new classification for most government workers known as "Schedule F," which would have effectively ended merit protections in the government workforce and allowed Trump to fire workers for any reason, including insufficient personal loyalty to him. This was rescinded in the Biden administration, but could be easily restored should Trump return to office.

"Stier emphasized that safeguarding current civil service protections isn’t a partisan issue and that 'many, many, many' Republicans are supportive," said the report. "'This is based on this really important misconception of this idea that civil servants should be beholden to the current occupant of the White House, as opposed to being there to be the expert, professional supporters of whoever’s elected and ultimately committed to the rule of law and to our Constitution,' he said. 'It’s not about loyalty.'"