Former Trump Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor is warning that President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an order that roughly “triples” the number of federal employees the president can dismiss at will, for any reason or none.

“The White House quietly issued an order turning 8,000 top ‘civil service’ jobs into roles that serve at the pleasure of the president,” Taylor explained, noting that these are the federal government’s “top lieutenants,” the “most senior career officials.”

These “are the people serving right under Trump’s political appointees (the ones he assigns to run federal departments and agencies). Presidents get ‘their people’ to reshape policy priorities.” The list of political appointees in any administration ordinarily runs about 4,000 people.

By making the next level down essentially political appointees, Trump “just tripled the size of his personal army inside government,” says Taylor, calling it “a breathtaking takeover of the machinery of state.”

“These aren’t rando’s,” Taylor added on social media. “They’re the directors, chiefs of staff, and the people who write the rules or decide who gets federal money, i.e. the lieutenants right below his political appointees. Until yesterday, they answered to the law. Now they answer to him.”

The federal civil service exists to carry out the wishes of the administration, but its duty, as he said, is to the law, not to any one president. That’s how a new administration can enter the White House while the government continues to run.

As Taylor noted, as DHS chief of staff, he too was a political appointee — someone who could be fired at any time.

“I wasn’t protected by anything other than the president’s favor,” Taylor says. “That’s why — when you make a decision to speak out about wrongdoing — you’ve got to be prepared to quit or be fired. You have no protections if you fall out of favor with the president. Unfortunately, that’s why you see so many Pam Bondis and Todd Blanches, eagerly doing whatever Trump wants. They know how easy it is to lose their job.”

That’s why the “top lieutenants” should not be political appointees, Taylor argues.

“Everyone underneath those positions, some two million civil servants, has historically been insulated from political whim by removal protections dating to the reforms that ended the spoils system back in the 1800s,” he writes. “What just happened is almost certainly illegal. A coalition of federal employees unions are, I hope, prepared to fight hard.”

Image via Reuters

Karl Rove is out with a warning for Democrats who may be optimistic about their chances of a big blue wave in November.

According to the longtime Republican political strategist and consultant, things may not be quite as rosy as Democrats think.

As Mediaite reported, Rove pointed to a recent series of Marquette polls of Americans who are certain to vote in November, and found that the margins between Democrats and Republicans are far smaller than many other polls currently suggest.

“Well, look, I’m not certain how much change there really is,” Rove told Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer. “You’ve got into the nitty gritty of these measures, how likely are you to vote, are you certain to vote etc., etc. But if you look at just the top line numbers among all the respondents in the survey, in May it was [46] D, 45 R — the Ds had a one-point advantage. In April it was 48-44, a four-point advantage. So the Democrats in the Marquette survey have dropped two, and the Republicans have added one, which is inside the margin of error.”

“Essentially,” Rove continued, “if you look at this one poll, what it suggests is that there hasn’t been much change, but if there is any change, it’s to the advantage of the Republicans.”

Rove urged viewers to “step back” and not lose sight of the “big picture,” which is that America is a “highly polarized country,” that has just gone through “a mid-decade redistricting that has mildly advantaged the Republicans.”

He says the real question is, “how big a gap do the Democrats need in order to pull off a significant sweep” in the House?

Democrats having an advantage of one point “ain’t much,” Rove said. He suggested that in order for Democrats to “take the House with a significant margin,” they will need at least a five or six point advantage, at a minimum.

According to Rove, many Democratic-held seats are in urban parts of the country, and therefore much more strongly Democratic than many GOP-held seats. Even when GOP-held seats are in “highly conservative rural America,” they are “not as conservative, not as Republican as their urban counterparts are Democrat.”

“So the Democrats right today have an advantage,” Rove declared, “but it’s likely to reduce — produce a relatively small margin in the House elections.”

“And remember, this is a contest between two unfavorables,” he concluded. “The president’s unfavorability is at 40 percent. The Democratic Party’s unfavorability is below 37. So who’s more — who’s less popular and how’s that going to affect the outcome?”

Image by LBJ Library via Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain 

While the future of President Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund is in doubt, his Department of Justice is already opening the door to alleged victims of government weaponization to file claims under an obscure 80-year-old law that grants the DOJ uncapped funds to settle with people who say they faced politically motivated prosecution.

The Wall Street Journal reports that DOJ officials have “emphasized” that they have the authority to settle with alleged victims as they see fit.

Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward on social media declared Tuesday, “We’re on it,” before deleting the post. He was responding to a post by U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a top Trump ally, who suggested the government could use the 80-year-old law to compensate alleged victims.

“I am still of the firm belief that there are many victims of the weaponized Biden Justice Department throughout this country,” Graham wrote on social media. “To suggest nothing happened and that the Biden DOJ did not weaponize the law against Americans is inaccurate. However, creating a new system that is untested is problematic.”

“We have a legal system already in place for people to make claims against the government,” he added. “That does not need to be reinvented.”

Some Trump supporters who were prosecuted for actions related to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol are working to file lawsuits against the government.

“This game just got started, and this is just strike one,” said former Trump policy adviser Michael Caputo, who served as the assistant secretary of Health and Human Services for Public Affairs. Caputo submitted the first claim from Trump’s anti-weaponization fund: $2.7 million. The WSJ did not specify the nature of Caputo’s claim.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the 80-year-old fund Federal Tort Claims Act “allows claims for damages against the government when it engages in wrongful actions or negligence that causes personal injury or property damage.”

Last Friday, nine now-pardoned January 6 defendants filed a lawsuit seeking payouts under the 1946 law, the Journal reports. They are alleging selective enforcement based on their support for Trump that was “orchestrated by people at the highest levels of the DOJ and FBI.”

One of the January 6 plaintiffs told the Journal that some charged in connection with the attack might have settled for less through Trump’s anti-weaponization fund, but now they are “playing hardball,” given the DOJ’s uncapped fund.