Trump, like all presidents, has the power to replace the people at the upper echelons of the executive branch—cabinet members, agency heads, their top advisors, and so on. Those personnel are subject to Senate approval just like any other high-level appointment. But Trump, with his eye on the purported “deep state,” wants to go much deeper and purge civil servants who are otherwise protected from dismissal by federal law.
To that end, various MAGA groups have reportedly built a shadow government of sorts to plan exactly who would take over which agency should Trump win next year. This goes beyond the usual transition planning that every president-elect does from November to January. The goal is to create a more ideologically submissive civil service that will carry out whatever Trump orders, even if those orders are legally dubious.
Among those drafted into the project is Russ Vought, a former Office of Management and Budget director under Trump, and close Trump ally Stephen Miller, who currently heads an anti-diversity legal group. Michael Rigas, who currently works at the America First Policy Institute, is also part of the team. While serving at the White House’s Office of Personnel Management in Trump’s first term, Rigas reportedly told others that he didn’t think the Pendleton Act of 1883, which set up the merit-based appointment system for federal jobs, was constitutional. (Neither Miller nor Rigas are lawyers.)