During his 2016 campaign, then-GOP nominee Donald Trump ran on a platform of “draining the swamp,” a catch-all term for dramatically reducing the size of the entrenched federal bureaucracy.
He made the same appeal in 2020, pleading with voters to give him another term so he could continue reducing the size of the bloated federal workforce, but Joe Biden defeated him.
Now, four years later and with the experience of a complete term under his belt, Trump not only made a similar pledge during his successful 2024 campaign, but now that he’s won with a clear mandate, he is preparing to put in place a plan that will cut into the so-called “deep state.”In March 2023, Trump announced his intention to relocate federal jobs outside of Washington, D.C., as part of a broader commitment to dismantling federal bureaucracy. “Continue Trump administration effort to move parts of the federal bureaucracy outside of the Washington Swamp, just like President Trump moved the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado,” his campaign said.
“Up to 100,000 government positions could be moved out of Washington,” the statement added.Trump has since doubled down on that figure. “As many as 100,000 government positions can be moved out — and I mean immediately out — of Washington to places filled with patriots who love America,” Trump said in a video breaking down his agenda.
The Federal News Network reported that when Trump moved Bureau of Land Management jobs, over 80 percent of the employees stayed in Washington, D.C., and did not take new positions with BLM.
Trump worked on reducing the federal workforce at the end of his first term as he anticipated being reelected. Just before the 2020 election, Trump issued an executive order to establish what was called “Schedule F,” a directive aimed at reclassifying the roles of middle managers within the federal workforce.
Former White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said then that Trump’s 2020 executive order was designed to remove “people in the bowels of the federal government working against this president” who pursued “their own selfish political agenda,” according to the Independent.
“It’s not a secret that we want people in positions that work with this president, not against him, and too often we have people in this government — I mean the federal government is massive, with millions of people — and there are a lot people out there taking action against this president and when we find them we will take appropriate action,” he said in October 2020.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said on the Friday before Election Day that Republicans have an ambitious plan to restructure and reduce the federal government if they win congressional majorities and former President Donald Trump wins the White House.
In a wide-ranging interview with Just the News, the Louisiana Republican also discussed a proposal to ‘deport’ tens of thousands of federal bureaucrats from Washington and relocate them to middle America.
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Johnson expressed that he and other GOP leaders aim to move federal agency offices, personnel, and assets away from the nation’s capital to bring them closer to the people they serve and further from the influence of wealthy special interests that often manipulate policy and spending.
“There’s a lot of talk about uprooting, you know, these entrenched bureaucracies and putting them out elsewhere around the country,” Johnson said.
He described this reinvention of the extensive federal bureaucracy, which employs over 2 million workers and contractors, as aligning with Trump’s vision to appoint billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk to head a government efficiency office.
