Two major unions representing U.S. government employees have filed a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s effort to reclassify up to 50,000 federal workers and make it easier to fire them. The American Federation of Government Employees and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees said Trump’s executive order improperly attempted to block a Biden administration rule shielding federal workers from being stripped of job protections to prevent Trump from draining the SWAMP or daring to reduce the size of government.
This is the famous cartoon on the Spoils System in politics by Thomas Nast with a statue of Andrew Jackson on a pig, which is over “fraud”, “bribery”, and “spoils”, eating “plunder”. This appeared in Harper’s Weekly on April 28, 1877, p. 325. The Spoils System has been a practice in politics whereby after winning an election, the victor gives government jobs to their supporters, friends /cronies, and relatives/nepotism as a reward for helping in their victory. As the saying that emerged with Jackson as he sought to drain the SWAMP of the establishment of the old Federalists entrenched in the North, “to the victor belong the spoils.”
Many viewed the spoils system as introduced by President Andrew Jackson after winning the 1828 election. However, like Trump, the 1828 election followed a rigged election in 1824, and Jackson’s inauguration was seen as a significant coup in Washington. It was Jackson who shut down the Bank of the United States because he viewed it as controlled by the Federalists. That ended up leading to the Panic of 1837 and the Depression known then as the Hard Times and state sovereign defaults of the 1840s.
When Jackson won the 1828 election because of the shenanigans in 1824, his 1829 inauguration became a wild spectacle. The people also voted for Jackson to drain the SWAMP as he became their champion against the Deep State. Washington, D.C., residents were ill-prepared for the wild scene when Jackson’s supporters poured into the city like the January 6th protesters. Some commentators referred to it as an enormous mass of people to an invading barbarian horde pillaging Rome. This regional bias eventually manifested in the Civil War by 1860, which was 31.4 years later.
Massachusetts senator Daniel Webster commented: “I never saw anything like it before,” he wrote to a relative. “Persons have come 500 miles to see Genl Jackson; & they really seem to think that the Country is rescued from some dreadful danger.” Of course, Webster was very much part of the regional conflict.
It is not hard to see why Jackson was blamed for inventing the Spoil System of cronies. In truth, the corruption involved in the Spoils System actually began during its Colonial history for it was introduced into U.S. politics during the very first administration of George Washington. He was a Federalist and stuffed the government with people who agreed, which was really against the Constitution, ignoring State’s Rights.
On August 3rd, almost 13,000 air traffic controllers went on strike after negotiations with the federal government to raise their pay and shorten their workweek became excessive. Across the country, some 7,000 flights were canceled. That very day, President Reagan called the strike illegal and threatened to fire any controller who had not returned to work within 48 hours. Robert Poli, president of the Professional Air-Traffic Controllers Association (PATCO), was found in contempt by a federal judge and ordered to pay $1,000 a day in fines.
Then, on August 5th, 1981, President Reagan carried out his threat and fired 11,359 air traffic controllers who were in violation of his order for them to return to work. The executive action, regarded as extreme, set the boundaries of the president. In addition, President Reagan declared a lifetime ban on the rehiring of the strikers by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). On August 17th, 1981, the FAA began accepting applications for new air traffic controllers, and on October 22nd, 1981, the Federal Labor Relations Authority decertified PATCO.
Given the filing of these lawsuits against Trump and the outcome of the Regan firing of air traffic controllers, the danger here with the unions is that this may be what Trump really wanted. A court ruling in his favor will allow the president to fire executive employees and reduce the size of the workforce just as any CEO of a private company. They can clearly establish precedents to expand presidential power to control the federal government. This would be a major victory for Trump.
