Aides to President Joe Biden are reportedly worried about job security even if Vice President Kamala Harris wins in November.
The revolving door of staffers in Washington is a common theme after an election cycle, but if Harris wins she would likely purge Biden’s aides and replace them with her own, a scenario reportedly causing angst, worry, and dread among current administration officials.
West Wing Playbook characterized the alarm as uncertain staffers who are “quietly uneasy” about their own prospects of retaining their position:
The conversation about which senior officials — and their more junior staffers — would stay or go should Harris win has gripped campus in the days since Biden dropped out of the race. It’s been whispered about in between meetings as staffers pass by each other in the marbled halls of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and it’s been discussed in private group chats. As they wait in lunch lines, some staffers scheme about what they might do in January should they no longer have a White House gig.
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A current administration official said they expect “the palace will be purged,” but that most of the junior staff, particularly at the agency level, will have the option to continue in their roles.
The Harris campaign is only in its second week. If she prevails, some Biden staffers told West Wing Playbook that they expected a similar “voluntary resignation” process to the Reagan-Bush hand off. And some of her campaign staff, who are themselves out of a job post-election, responded to White House aides’ gripes with an eye roll.
“Biden folks didn’t expect this,” a former White House official told Playbook. “They know they’re on the chopping block.”
Sacked staffers typically seek employment elsewhere, such as on Capitol Hill to K Street to newsrooms. “I mean, I guess I’ll just go back to the Hill,” one staffer reportedly told a colleague as the person carried their coffee back through the White House gate, Playbook reported.The report comes as former President Donald Trump is forecast to beat Harris, statistician Nate Silver’s model found Tuesday, a victory that would cause not only White House staffers to lose their jobs but many of those who work in federal agencies.Trump will purge the administrative state by firing career bureaucrats from the DOJ and the FBI if he wins reelection, nine people involved in the effort told Reuters in May.
The term “administrative state” specifically describes the phenomenon of unaccountable and unelected administrative agencies, including the national security apparatus, exercising power to create and enforce their own rules.
Trump’s reported focus on overhauling the DOJ is predicated on his belief that career bureaucrats inside the administrative state improperly target conservatives, conservative groups, or conservative ideals with the help of the national security state or intelligence apparatus. Trump’s contention is buoyed by significant reporting on various controversies, such as the coronavirus, the Russia hoax, and the “laptop from hell.”
Before Trump left office in 2021, he signed an executive order (EO) to reclassify federal government employees into Schedule F, which would have allowed the president to enhance accountability and job performance within the bureaucratic agencies.
“You have some people that are protected that shouldn’t be protected,” Trump said in May.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
