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Fixing the civil service must begin with trusting managers

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5 months ago

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Before the Trump administration blitzed the civil service over the last six weeks, it has been decades since the last major attempt to reform the federal personnel system.

Lawmakers haven’t passed a major bill to broadly restructure federal workforce rules in years. There was the Civil Service Reform Act of 1996, sponsored by Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) that passed the House, but never made any progress in the Senate. In 2008, Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) wanted to create a civil service commission to study seven broad areas of the federal personnel system, including compensation, recruiting, retaining employees an policies and barriers to terminating under-performing workers. That bill never got out of committee, let alone get a vote by either body of Congress.

Sure there have been successful attempts at reform along the edges, like the Chance to Compete Act becoming law in 2024 or efforts to address pay issues for specific skillsets like cybersecurity with the Cyber Talent Management System at the Homeland Security Department.

But mostly, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have largely given up on major civil service reform efforts.

While the federal civil service system has been slow to evolve, there is a growing set of successful changes at the state level that lawmakers and agencies could consider. And when the Trump administration’s “shock and awe” strip down of the federal workforce is done, the Manhattan Institute is offering a roadmap for what its authors say are lasting and impactful reforms.

Judge Glock is the director of research and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

“States can teach the federal civil service about civil service reform because in a lot of different areas the reforms at the state level would be unimaginable to many people in the federal civil service. Many of these state civil service systems have gone to almost complete at-will employment, many of them went to extremely decentralized hiring authority down to individual agency managers with very little oversight from a central personnel office. Many of them have very broad, banded pay scales and a lot of pay flexibility. And many of them have very limited to no collective bargaining for someone who worked in the states,” said Judge Glock, the director of research and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, in an interview with Federal News Network. “A lot of these states have tens of thousands of public employees in them. They were very large workforces, and many of them been operated under what’s called by academics, even radical civil service reform for decades at this point. The sort of reforms that have worked in Texas and their education bureaucracy, their transportation bureaucracy and their health bureaucracy can certainly be imported in whole or in part, into the Department of Veterans Affairs or the Department of Transportation and other agencies.”

The study, Radical Civil Service Reform Is Not Radical Lessons for the Federal Government from the States, highlights four changes that the authors say, generally speaking, have been successful across several states.

These include:

  • At-will employment should be the norm, not the exception, for federal workers.
  • Decentralized and flexible hiring should be fully adopted by the federal government.
  • More flexibility for pay should be adopted at the federal level.
  • Union collective bargaining over the conditions of employment should be banned at the federal level.

Glock said he recognizes that the first three are all doable at the federal level, but the end of collecting bargaining may be more difficult.

“At the very least, we should look closely at the results of these experiments as they were once called in the states, and see what the outcomes have been. Most of the academic literature has been pretty positive about the reforms,” he said. “Now, sometimes the academics will be a little uncertain about whether or not to say, on the whole, they were positive or they created a lot of great outcomes everywhere. But if you look at things from surveys of the public employees in these states, especially the human resource professionals in these states, and if you look at things like the lack of turnover or retention and other of these metrics of civil service success, these states look pretty good. They look a little better than the older, unreformed civil service states like California or New York. I just think there’s a lot of lessons there that haven’t been appreciated at all, frankly, in the DC civil service reform discussion.”

Let’s take the idea of moving the public sector to “at-will” employees, which means, again with some caveats, that your employer can remove you at any particular time and you can leave at any particular time.

No mass politicization

Glock said Georgia, under Gov. Zell Miller, a Democrat, moved to at-will employees in 1996.

“That means they usually didn’t have appeal or grievance rights outside of their own agency. Usually, these agencies did have internal grievance procedures, but they weren’t allowed to bring those to some equivalent of the Merit Systems Protection Board, and they weren’t allowed to bring those to firing or dismissal issues to courts,” he said. “Now, if you look at the states that have done this, there was a lot of understandable concern that you’d see mass politicization, mass turnover after elections, including elections that put a different party into office, and that you might see a decline in employee satisfaction and other sort of metrics. Now, on the whole, that hasn’t happened.”

While Glock said there’s certainly been individual issues in states about some firings and some concerns reported about political actions by supervisors, the data shows the reforms largely have been positive.

He pointed to a survey of Texas human resource managers, which found about 11% said they had ever thought of an instance where politics or connections had influenced a personnel decision. Glock said he didn’t think that is extraordinary as compared to the traditional civil service in Texas or in DC or elsewhere.

He said other data shows there’s some areas that have seen slightly higher turnover and removals, but still in most places, it was nowhere approaching the private sector level of removals.

The move to decentralized hiring authorities in states, such as Florida, Arizona, Kansas and Missouri in the 1990s gave individual agency managers almost “carte blanche discretion” to hire whomever they think best.

“A lot of these states that have moved to more decentralized hiring seem to be working very efficiently. You haven’t seen examples of mass political hiring merely because of preference. I think, partially, because of those constitutional protections that prevent people from being removed merely because they differ with the governor or the president in charge in terms of party or ideology,” he said. “You seem to have more efficiency that you have agencies, again, especially in Texas, which is famous for its decentralized human resource system, where they don’t even have a central personnel office. People can tailor their hiring needs the needs of their own agency. They don’t need to go to the central office all the time to get approval for every hire, every posting or every way they evaluate it.”

Managers given more discretion

The third recommendation of implementing a broad banded pay system isn’t necessarily new to the federal sector. The Government Accountability Office, for example, uses pay bands. The Defense Department piloted pay-for-performance in the early 2000s before abandoning it in 2009.

Glock said that states have had better success, particularly for positions where output measurement is clear.

“What a lot of states, especially Florida, South Carolina and other states, have done is they’ve collapsed their large number of job titles and classification schedules to a very small number, and inside each of those job, position or classification titles, they have pretty broad pay scales in which the top pay can be up to three times the bottom level pay,” he said. “That gives managers a lot more discretion to say, ‘Hey, I know this employee is doing very well. I think they’re performing great. I think I couldn’t get them if I had to pay them just the minimum scale. So, I’m going to pay them than two and a half times what they I normally would pay them.’ The managers in those states say that works. There’s a lot more retention of high-quality employees. That’s been one of the consistent findings of the research studies.”

Glock added that while the current civil service approach to pay includes step increases, the ability to give hiring managers a bigger say in how much they pay employees seems to drive better results.

“The overall lesson that we’re finding in this report is that states that trust their managers more tend to do better,” he said. “States that trust their public employees managers to manage how much their workers get paid, to allocate pay inside their departments, to decide their own disciplinary procedures, to decide their own hiring procedures, tend to do better because those managers closer to the ground tend to know what’s required.”

That concept of trusting your employees to make pay and personnel decisions has been lost to great degree in a system initially built in 1883 and updated in 1978.

The post Fixing the civil service must begin with trusting managers first appeared on Federal News Network.

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DECLASSIFIED: Democrat Whistleblower Warned FBI That Adam Schiff Authorized Leaking Classified Information to Destroy Trump During Russia Hoax – Swalwell Also Played a Role in the Leaks

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23 hours ago

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August 12, 2025

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An unidentified Democrat whistleblower told the FBI that then-Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff approved leaking classified information to smear Trump, according to newly declassified FBI 302 interview reports obtained by Just The News.

Beginning in 2017, the intel officer who worked on the House Intelligence Committee repeatedly told the FBI that Schiff authorized leaking classified information to destroy Trump during the Russiagate hoax.

The whistleblower said Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell was likely the source of the classified leaks.

At the time of the leaks, Adam Schiff served as the ranking member (and later the chairman) of the House Intelligence Committee. Schiff is now a US Senator for California.

The Gateway Pundit repeatedly reported on Schiff’s leaks to the media during the Trump-Russia witch hunt.

According to the newly declassified FBI report, DOJ officials did not show any interest in probing Schiff over his illegal leaks.

The whistleblower told the FBI as recent as 2023 that he personally witnessed Adam Schiff approve the leaking of classified information.

“When working in this capacity, [redacted staffer’s name] was called to an all-staff meeting by SCHIFF,” the interview report said, according to Just The News. “In this meeting, SCHIFF stated the group would leak classified information which was derogatory to President of the United States DONALD J. TRUMP. SCHIFF stated the information would be used to indict President TRUMP.”

The whistleblower also told federal agents that Schiff was promised the posiition as CIA Director if Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election.

The Democrat whistleblower was abruptly fired for reporting Schiff’s leaks to the FBI.

Just The News reported:

A career intelligence officer who worked for Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee for more than a decade repeatedly warned the FBI beginning in 2017 that then-Rep. Adam Schiff had approved leaking classified information to smear then-President Donald Trump over the now-debunked Russiagate scandal, according to bombshell FBI memos that Director Kash Patel has turned over to Congress.

The FBI 302 interview reports obtained by Just the News state the intelligence staffer — a Democrat by party affiliation who described himself as a friend to both Schiff, now a California senator, and former Republican House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes — considered the classified leaking to be “unethical,” “illegal,” and “treasonous,” but was told not to worry about it because Schiff believed he would be spared prosecution under the Constitution’s speech and debate clause.

No publicly-disclosed opinion from the Attorney General or the Solicitor General can be found making that determination as a matter of law.

But officials told Just the News that DOJ officials showed little interest in pursuing Schiff when the allegations were brought to them years ago, citing the very same excuse the lawmaker had offered.

Read the full report by Just The News here.

The post DECLASSIFIED: Democrat Whistleblower Warned FBI That Adam Schiff Authorized Leaking Classified Information to Destroy Trump During Russia Hoax – Swalwell Also Played a Role in the Leaks appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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WashPost Editorial Board Complains Illegal DACAs Might Have to Pay Higher College Tuition, yet their Readers Disagree

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23 hours ago

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August 12, 2025

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The U.S. Department of Education has opened investigations into five universities for offering scholarships that exclude U.S. citizens and legal residents in favor of undocumented students, including recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

The Washington Post’s editorial board complained about this today, saying that ‘helping undocumented students’ to ‘afford’ higher education ‘isn’t discrimination.’

The Trump Administration is arguing in court that prioritizing illegal aliens over American citizens is discriminatory against American students based on the protected class of ‘national origin.’

The Post utilizes several often-used left-wing memes related to immigrants, namely that these workers will ‘do the jobs Americans won’t do’ when it said: “The American Immigration Council reports that many of them go on to fill essential roles in health care, education and tech — sectors facing urgent workforce shortages.” The Post also uses the ‘diversity is our strength’ meme, when it says, “These immigrants make universities — and the country — richer, stronger and more intellectually vibrant.” The Post also uses the left-wing meme of ‘cost the U.S. government far less than they contribute, financially and otherwise,’ which has been repeatedly disproven.

The median federal student-loan balance held by U.S. citizen borrowers who attended government colleges is roughly $30,000 presently. The average cost of college tuition & fees at public 4-year institutions has risen 141.0% over the last 20 years.

Even in the comments attached to the Washington Post article, their own left-wing readers are not happy with their editorial stance. The Post’s own “AI-generated summary” of the comments characterizes that they “predominantly express strong opposition to universities providing scholarships to undocumented students” and summarize the comments as saying it’s unfair to prioritize non-citizen illegals over American citizens.

Even though the readership demographics of the Washington Post skew heavily left, with 59% identifying as liberal/progressive and only 11% as conservatives, their own readers were upset and angry with the paper’s position supporting illegal aliens over American kids:

State schools are typically heavily subsidized by state governments with tax dollars to provide lower-cost options for residents. The policy goal is to provide high-quality education to citizens who cannot afford it, but left-wing activists in college administrations and in the federal government, have been steering resources to illegal immigrants and their children instead.

The media typically refers to these children of illegals as “Dreamers,” a nickname that comes from the proposed DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors), a never-passed bill that aimed to give certain undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children a path to legal status.

The universities under investigation are:

  • University of Michigan
  • University of Louisville
  • University of Nebraska Omaha
  • University of Miami
  • Western Michigan University

The investigations follow complaints from the Legal Insurrection Foundation, which argues that such scholarships violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by discriminating on the basis of national origin.

At the University of Michigan, the “Dreamer Scholarship” awarded $100,000 in 2023–2024 to undocumented students. The school distributed $855 million in total financial aid during the same year.

Undocumented students are ineligible for federal financial aid and typically rely on state support, institutional aid, and private scholarships. Several states, including Texas and Florida, have recently repealed laws granting in-state tuition to undocumented students.

There are an estimated 528,000 DACA recipients under age 18 at present according to federal data. Estimates of the total number of illegal immigrants in America range from 17 million to 29.5 million, with 7 million entering the country since Joe Biden’s Presidency started.

The Washington Post’s editorial board criticized the investigations, describing them as “absurd” and “cruel,” and argued that undocumented students contribute to the economy and fill roles in sectors facing worker shortages.

By taking heavily subsidized in-state tuition spots, accessing need-based and “Dream” grants, and enrolling without generating the federal reimbursements on which colleges depend, illegals simultaneously crowd out citizen students, shift fixed overhead onto the remaining reimbursable pool, and trigger new capital projects that are financed through higher tuition and fees, so every American on campus ends up paying a hidden surcharge that often runs into thousands of dollars annually.

Part of the media’s messaging on illegal immigration is to constantly claim, without evidence, that illegals are always cost-neutral or ‘pay their share of taxes.’ Yet studies show that illegal aliens are major ‘fiscal drains’ on the country’s public revenues. Estimates are that every illegal costs the country $10,400 per year, significantly depleting funds for K-12 education, hospitals, Medicaid, among other public assistance programs.

The Education Department has not announced when the investigations will conclude.

The Washington Post has an estimated daily circulation of 110,000, and 135,000 for its Sunday edition, and an estimated 2 million total subscribers both digital and online. It is owned by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, who operates an Amazon PAC that gives equally to both parties. Amazon employees have historically given 85% of their campaign donations to Democrats. The Post endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016, Joe Biden in 2020, and Kamala Harris in 2024, through a signed piece and not through the editorial board.

The post WashPost Editorial Board Complains Illegal DACAs Might Have to Pay Higher College Tuition, yet their Readers Disagree appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Trump-Hating Billionaire Mark Cuban Roasts AOC, Bernie, Schumer, and Warren — Says They Should Be Thanking Trump for Pulling Off a Corporate Tax Move Democrats “Could Never Pull Off”

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23 hours ago

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August 12, 2025

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Credit: Gage Skidmore / X

President Donald Trump has struck a groundbreaking deal with semiconductor giants Nvidia and AMD that will pour millions into America’s coffers, and it’s triggering all the right people.

According to the Financial Times, Nvidia and AMD have agreed to hand over a staggering 15% of their revenues from high-end chip sales to China as part of a special arrangement with the Trump administration. The deal was a condition for granting export licenses for their top-tier chips, Nvidia’s H20 and AMD’s MI308, to the Chinese market.

The move is essentially a “sales tax” on some of America’s largest tech firms for doing business with Beijing, and the money will go straight to the U.S. government.

But while the far-left media is still scrambling to figure out how to spin this as “bad for democracy,” one unlikely voice, Trump-hating billionaire Mark Cuban, just lit up the Democrats for failing to achieve what Trump just did in one stroke.

Cuban, who has spent years trashing Trump, took to X to roast far-left darlings Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Chuck Schumer, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren:

Hey @AOC, @BernieSanders, @SenSchumer, @SenWarren, every Dem should be thanking @potus for doing what the Dems have dreamed of doing, but have NEVER been able to do, creating a sales tax on 2 of the biggest semi companies in the country ! This opens the door for Sales Tax for export licenses on EVERYTHING!

He is going to generate corporate tax revenue that you guys only wish you could pass. You should be thanking him all day, every day for this brilliant move you guys couldn’t ever pull off !

In the future, don’t call it a tax, call it a Commission for America. BOOM!

In another post, Cuban wrote:

This is a “billionaire’s tax” structured as a royalty or sales tax on semiconductors from the most valuable company in the world, sold to China.

While it’s scary on a lot of levels to businesses and entrepreneurs, it’s what @aoc, @BernieSanders and @SenWarren should have thought of. They are so intent on income and wealth taxes on “oligarchs”, they have no concept of leverage in business. Trump does.

Potus is more progressive when it comes to taxation than anyone in the progressive wing of the Dems has ever been. The Dems should be celebrating just how progressive it is. The irony.

If Dems celebrated this as they should, republicans would be so confused. lol.

He wants to grab whatever revenue he can from our biggest businesses, which are owned by … wait for it … billionaires. He knows they will pay for something he has, that they need. in order to grow their companies. That’s understanding leverage

He took 15 pct of equity from a company. That is the ULTIMATE wealth tax. He diluted every shareholder, upfront , regardless of their net worth. Lol. A progressive dream !

Everyone knows how I feel about POTUS, but he doesn’t get everything wrong.

Tariffs are bad. They kill small businesses and entrepreneurs. A group he never talks about. He is dead wrong here.

And I disagree on most of the non-business things he does.

But when it comes to tax revenue generation , as I’ve said to many Dems over the last 12 months, if you want to generate revenue from the richest of us, give them incentives to give you money and do the right thing. Particularly for their businesses.

Trump gave nvidia incentives to pay probably 4b and growing per year, know that created 25b or more in high margin revenue.

Will this make up for the explosion of the deficits we face ? Not as it stands now. Not close.

But give him credit for knowing how those CEOs approach problems and opportunities , and using his leverage to generate tax revenues .

Translation: Cuban just admitted Trump outflanked the Left at their own game, taxing corporations, while protecting American interests abroad.

The irony is almost too perfect. The Democrats who scream about “corporate greed” and “making the rich pay their fair share” are now watching Trump make it happen in a way they never could, and with their biggest tech allies footing the bill.

The post Trump-Hating Billionaire Mark Cuban Roasts AOC, Bernie, Schumer, and Warren — Says They Should Be Thanking Trump for Pulling Off a Corporate Tax Move Democrats “Could Never Pull Off” appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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