Why It’s ‘Almost Impossible’ to Fire a Federal Employee: James Sherk

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This interview with James Sherk, was first released in August of 2022.

Sherk is director of the Center for American Freedom at the America First Policy Institute:
“If you have a body that's 20% healthy normal cells, or, sorry, 80% healthy normal cells and 20% cancer cells, you've got an extremely large problem, and that's what you've got in the bureaucracy.”

During the Trump administration, unelected federal bureaucrats delayed, blocked, or subverted much of Trump’s agenda, he says. But firing a federal bureaucrat often requires costly litigation.

“More often than not, they get reinstated. … And you’re going to have to cover their attorney’s fees and give them back pay,” Sherk says.

Sherk was deeply involved in efforts during the Trump administration to give presidents the ability to fire powerful bureaucrats that engage in insubordination or intransigence, most notably in the drafting of the Schedule F executive order.

“They have no accountability to the American people … It’s a huge problem in a country founded on the principle of government by the consent of the governed,” Sherk says.

CHAPTER TITLES
0:00:00 - Unelected Bureaucrats and Accountability Issues
0:00:27 - The President's Power and Bureaucratic Resistance
0:01:10 - Examples of Bureaucratic Resistance
0:07:11 - Impact of Bureaucratic Resistance on Policy Implementation
0:11:36 - The Schedule F Executive Order
0:16:44 - Challenges and Delays in Implementing Schedule F
0:20:16 - Criticisms and Misconceptions About Schedule F
0:29:11 - Examples of Bureaucratic Misconduct
0:42:31 - The Role of the Center for American Freedom
0:43:37 - Advice for Future Presidents

James Sherk: “So the way the government is staffed is you have about 2.2 million people in the executive branch. It's a huge bureaucracy, and there's 4000 political appointees. So the political appointees are there to provide high level direction and supervision and sort of policy directions with the expectation that the career staff are going to faithfully implement those orders if they decide they don't want to carry out those orders, and they're protected with these removal protections. They're simply not orders of magnitudes near enough political appointees to do that work instead. So one example, the Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, is notorious for having very ideologically motivated career staff. And many, many, many times during the Trump administration, these career staff were told, Well, there's projects we want you to work on. And the answer that came back was, no, go pan sand.”

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