A seasoned political operative is quietly investigating scores of federal employees suspected of being opposed to Republican Donald Trump’s policies, a highly unusual and potentially chilling effort that coincides with broader conservative preparations for a new White House.
Tom Jones and his American Accountability Foundation are investigating the histories, social media posts, and commentary of critical high-level federal officials, beginning with the Department of Homeland Security. They rely on advice from his network of conservative friends, including employees. They want to post the findings online, which has some people concerned.
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With $100,000 in Heritage Foundation funding, the idea is to put 100 names of government employees on a website this summer to identify a prospective new administration that may be impeding a second-term Trump agenda and should be scrutinized, reclassified, reassigned, or fired.
“We need to understand who these people are and what they do,” said Jones, a former congressional staffer for Republican senators.
The idea of creating and distributing a list of federal employees demonstrates how far Trump’s backers are ready to go to ensure that nothing or no one can stymie his objectives in a hypothetical second term. Jones’ Project Sovereignty 2025 coincides with Heritage’s Project 2025, which builds the basis for a potential new White House, including policies, initiatives, and staff.
The campaign, which focuses on top-career government officials who are not political appointees, has startled democracy experts and upset the civil service sector, with some comparing it to McCarthyism’s red scare.
According to Jacqueline Simon, policy director at the American Federation of Government Employees, the rhetoric used—tthe Heritage Foundation’s release lauded the group for identifying “anti-American bad actors”—is “shocking.”
Civil servants are frequently ex-military personnel who must swear an oath to the Constitution in order to work for the federal government, rather than a loyalty test to a president, she and others claim.
“It just seems as though their goal is to try to menace federal employees and sow fear,” said Simon, whose union supports Democratic President Joe Biden for reelection.
As Trump, who has been convicted of felony charges in a hush money case and faces a four-count federal indictment accusing him of attempting to overturn his 2020 election loss, prepares to face Biden again this fall, far-right conservatives have vowed to demolish what they refer to as the deep-state bureaucracy.
The Trump campaign has stated that outside groups do not speak for the ex-president, who alone determines his policy priorities.
Conservatives believe the federal workforce has overstepped its mandate by becoming a power center capable of driving or thwarting a president’s agenda. During the Trump administration, government officials faced criticism from the White House and Republicans on Capitol Hill, with his own Cabinet frequently objecting to some of his more unusual or even illegal initiatives.
While Jones’ organization will not necessarily propose firing or reassigning the federal employees it selects, the activity is consistent with Heritage’s broad Project 2025 strategy for a conservative administration.
Heritage’s Project 2025 recommends restoring Trump’s Schedule F policy, which would attempt to reclassify tens of thousands of federal employees as political appointees, potentially allowing for mass dismissals, though a Biden administration rule aims to make that difficult. The Heritage Project is attempting to recruit and train a new generation to travel to Washington to occupy government positions.
Heritage announced the $100,000 Innovation Award last month, stating that it will support the American Accountability Foundation’s “investigative researchers, in-depth reports, and educational efforts to alert Congress, a conservative administration, and the American people to the presence of anti-American bad actors burrowed into the administrative state and ensure appropriate action is taken.”
Heritage President Kevin Roberts stated that the “weaponization of the federal government” was only feasible due to the “deep state of entrenched Leftist bureaucrats.” He expressed pride in supporting the efforts of American Accountability Foundation employees “in their fight to hold our government accountable and drain it of bad actors.”
The federal government employs approximately 2.2 million people, including those in Washington, D.C., as well as those whom unions claim many Americans know as friends or neighbors in cities across the country.
Approximately 4,000 positions in the government are designated political appointees, which move from one presidential administration to the next, while the majority are career professionals, ranging from landscapers at Veterans Administration cemeteries to economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Some see the public list-making as reminiscent of Joseph McCarthy, the senator who held rigorous hearings on suspected communist sympathizers during the Cold War. Roy Cohn, a prominent staffer who became a confidant of a younger Trump, organized the hearings.
Skye Perryman, CEO of the advocacy organization Democracy Forward, described it as very distressing and evocative of “the darker parts of American history.”
Publicly naming government employees is an “intimidation tactic to try to chill the work of these civil servants,” she added, and is part of a larger “retribution agenda” going on this election season.
“They’re seeking to undermine our democracy,” she told the crowd. “They’re seeking to undermine the way that our government works for people.”
From his desk above rickhouses housing barrels in the Bourbon Capitol of Bardstown, Jones dismissed analogies to McCarthyism as “nonsense.”
He was a former worker for then-Sen. Jim DeMint, a conservative Republican from South Carolina who later led Heritage and now runs the Conservative Policy Institute, where the American Accountability Foundation has its mailing address. Jones previously worked for Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and supplied opposition research for Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Jones’ team of six researchers works remotely across the country, combining data concerning federal employees at Homeland Security, the State Department, and other departments dealing with immigration and border issues.
Their focus is on the highest ranks of civil servants, including GS-13, GS-14, and GS-15 personnel, as well as those in senior management positions who may oppose Trump’s plans for tighter borders and more deportations.
“I think it’s important for the next administration to understand who those people are,” Jones told the crowd.
He rejected the hazards associated with publicly releasing the names, salary information, and other details of federal employees who have some level of privacy, as well as the possibility that his group’s work would jeopardize people’s jobs.
He exclaimed, “You don’t get to make policy and then say, ‘Hey, don’t scrutinize me!”
He acknowledges that part of the work frequently involves a “gut check” or “instinct” to determine whether federal employees could face accusations of trying to obstruct a conservative agenda.
“We’re looking at, ‘Are there the wrong people on the bus right now that are, you know, openly hostile to efforts to secure the southern border?'” he told me.
When it first investigated Biden nominees, his own group came under fire.
In January 2021, Biden rescinded Trump’s Schedule F executive order, but a Government Accountability Office investigation in 2022 revealed that agencies believed a future administration might revive it.
Since then, the Biden administration has created a rule that makes it more difficult to fire workers. A new government might direct the Office of Personnel Management to repeal the policy, but this would take time and would be subject to legal challenges.
