This report details the methodical and wide-ranging plans by far-right organizations and activists to dismantle the civil service under a future anti-democratic administration.

The report highlights how Project 2025, a coalition led by former Trump administration officials, the Heritage Foundation, and more than 80 other organizations is already reportedly vetting ideologically-aligned workers to replace career civil servants that would be purged by a future, anti-democratic administration, among other tactics. Project 2025, as well as other aligned organizations, are lending their significant capacity to dismantling the federal civil service, posing a perilous threat to American democracy. 

In addition to identifying threats to the civil service, the report also features information about how the pro-democracy community has started to respond to efforts like Project 2025. In November, for example, 26 organizations joined with Democracy Forward to submit comments in support of Office of Personnel Management’s proposed Upholding Civil Service Protections and Merit System Principles rule. The proposed rule is intended to counter a return of the so-called “Schedule F,” which was a proposal to reclassify large numbers of civil servants into positions from which they could be readily terminated at the end of the Trump administration. Project 2025 specifically mentions plans to reissue Schedule F.