Rooting out Burrowers

Several weeks ago, I devoted my FT column to examining the Obama administration’s effort to consolidate its gender-equality gains by hiring attorneys to investigate and prosecute civil rights violations. Obama appointees will burrow in and continue the Obama agenda after he leaves office.

Evan Osnos’s attempt to imagine Trump’s first term turns to this theme. Osnos spoke to Newt Gingrich who “told me that he is urging Trump to give priority to an obscure but contentious conservative issue—ending lifetime tenure for federal employees. This would also galvanize Republicans and help mend rifts in the Party after a bitter election. ‘Getting permission to fire corrupt, incompetent, and dishonest workers—that’s the absolute showdown,’ Gingrich said. He assumes that federal employees’ unions would resist, thus producing, in his words, an ‘ongoing war’ similar to the conflict that engulfed Madison, Wisconsin, in 2011, when Governor Scott Walker moved to limit public-sector employees’ collective-bargaining rights. After five months of protests, and a failed effort to recall the Governor and members of the state senate, Walker largely prevailed. Gingrich predicts that that chaotic dynamic can be brought to Washington. ‘You have to end the civil-service permanent employment,’ he said. ‘You start changing that and the public-employee unions will just come unglued.’”