The Real Reason Trump Fired Everyone

Hint: Replacements will be arriving soon.

When Donald Trump vowed to “drain the swamp” by firing Washington bureaucrats, it was never about cutting waste. It was a calculated strategy to purge career civil servants and replace them with fiercely loyal political appointees. Upon taking office, Trump immediately reinstated “Schedule F” – an executive order that strips tens of thousands of federal employees of civil service protections so they can be fired at will​.

To replace those who are fired, the Heritage Foundation (architect of Project 2025) has assembled an army of tens of thousands of vetted loyalists. “Loyalty tests” ensure hires will “follow Trump without question”. As Project 2025 senior adviser (and former Trump personnel director) John McEntee put it bluntly: “The number one thing you’re looking for is people that are aligned with the agenda.”

In short, the mass firings are not about efficiency or reform – they are about installing a new government of obedience, built in Trump’s image.

Is this image too dystopian, or is it a vision of what’s to come? I’ll let you (and the passage of time) be the judge.

The Agenda Is Already Underway

This is not a theoretical scheme; it’s already happening in real time. Upon taking office, Trump moved rapidly to implement the Project 2025 vision across federal agencies. An independent tracker of the new administration’s actions shows that at the time of publication, 42% of Project 2025’s nearly 300 policy objectives have already been put in place or are in progress​. It is certainly clear that the majority of decisions being made align with the Project 2025 blueprint – from dismantling regulatory safeguards to hollowing out oversight offices – all within the first few months of the term.

The very aptly named “Project 2025 Tracker” shows blistering progress with more than 1,300 days still remaining in Trump’s second (and possibly final) term.

Consider some of the early actions that mirror Project 2025’s goals:

• Reinstating “Schedule F”: Within hours of inauguration, Trump signed orders to reclassify tens of thousands of civil servants as “Schedule F” (stripping them of job protections) and imposed a federal workforce crackdown​. Agencies were directed to bar most employees from remote work and to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs government-wide. Trump even offered federal workers lucrative buyouts – up to 8 months’ pay – to quickly clear out those unwilling to fall in line​. These moves gave Trump sweeping authority to fire career staff en masse, exactly as the Heritage plan envisioned. Union leaders immediately blasted the order as “a shameless attempt to politicize the federal workforce.”

• Eliminating Oversight: The Department of Homeland Security gutted three internal oversight offices, laying off more than 100 career officials in a single day​. DHS’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties – which investigates abuses and ensures laws are followed – was effectively shuttered, as were the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman and Immigration Detention Ombudsman offices​. A Trump DHS spokesperson defended the purge, saying these watchdog offices “function as internal adversaries” that “obstructed” the President’s agenda​. In other words, neutral career staff providing oversight were treated as enemies to be removed. This dramatic consolidation of power aligns with Project 2025’s call to “take down the Deep State” by sidelining or firing officials deemed insufficiently loyal.

• Targeting Opponents & the “Enemy Within”: Across the government, Trump’s team moved against those they saw as ideologically hostile. Agencies were ordered to draw up plans for a “second wave” of mass layoffs by mid-March, aiming to fire thousands more federal workers in the coming weeks​. Early actions also struck at social and environmental policies long opposed by the far-right. For example, Trump quickly suspended federal funding for clean energy projects that had been approved by Congress, defying the law in order to halt programs he viewed as “woke” climate spending​. (A judge later ordered those funds reinstated, but officials still dragged their feet in releasing them.) He also rolled back civil rights rules – such as by halting enforcement of Title VI anti-discrimination cases in education​ – and reversed LGBTQ+ inclusion policies. “They’re going after the easiest targets first, like LGBTQ rights and DEI initiatives,” observed one tracker of Project 2025, noting these could be done quickly via executive action.

All of these steps illustrate that the machinery of Project 2025 is already at cruising speed. This agenda is not hypothetical or waiting for some distant start date – it’s here and now, methodically reshaping federal policy and personnel to fit Trump’s hardline vision.

Trump’s Personnel Army

Project 2025 isn’t just about drafting policy wish-lists – the Heritage Foundation has created a “Presidential Personnel Database” that serves as a pipeline for pre-vetted Trump loyalists​. On its website, Heritage urges conservatives to “submit your resume” to join the next administration, promising that “properly vetted and trained personnel” will help “take back our government.” This massive talent drive, unprecedented in scale, effectively functioned as a shadow HR department for the incoming regime. By late 2023 – months before any election outcome was known – Project 2025 had already gathered over 5,000 applications from would-be officials​. The goal was to have an “army” of loyal operatives ready to fill up to 50,000 federal positions, from Cabinet posts down to mid-level policy jobs​. One official involved told Axios that hundreds of people have spent tens of millions of dollars to build this list, aiming to install “a pre-vetted, pro-Trump army of up to 54,000 loyalists across government.”

How do you vet an applicant for loyalty? By asking, in essence, “When did you become a true believer?” Heritage’s personnel questionnaire is not a typical job application about skills or experience – it’s an ideological litmus test. Leaked copies of the survey reveal that it pointedly asks candidates to describe which thinkers, books, or political leaders most influenced their beliefs. One prompt asks, “What part of Candidate Trump’s campaign message most appealed to you and why?”​ Another: “Name one person, past or present, who has most influenced your political philosophy.”​ Applicants are even prodded to name a favorite political book and a “living public policy figure” they admire.

Just a few more of the eyebrow-raising questions featured in the Project 2025 application to be included in the Presidential Personnel Database. The application system is still active, and you can go see it for yourself if you’re willing to provide your phone number (perhaps get a burner phone).

These might seem like odd questions for a government job, but to Project 2025 they serve as crucial filters. They want ride-or-die MAGA devotees – people who will cite Trump-aligned icons and ideology at every turn. As one Trump White House alumnus explained, the questionnaire is designed to gauge when an applicant “got red-pilled.” “They want to see that you’re listening to Tucker [Carlson], and not pointing to the Reagan revolution or any George W. Bush stuff,” this person said bluntly​. In short, Heritage’s database is sorting for purity over expertise. It cares less about your résumé than whether you can recite the MAGA gospel.

The result is a top-down hiring operation unlike anything in U.S. history. Kevin Roberts – president of the Heritage Foundation – has described its mission as getting the next conservative president “ready to govern in the most aggressive, ambitious, audacious way to destroy the Deep State.” The database of loyalists is the ammunition for that takeover. Every department of government, from the Pentagon to the EPA, will soon be staffed with people chosen for their allegiance to Trump’s agenda. Even John McEntee, who ran Trump’s presidential personnel office in 2020 (famous for weeding out officials deemed disloyal), has been helping Heritage as a senior adviser​. This all but guarantees the Project 2025 hiring lists are Trump-centric. (Heritage claims any GOP candidate could have used them, but the presence of McEntee and company shows where the effort is really focused​.)

The culture this “personnel army” is expected to adopt is one of strict hierarchy and obedience. As Axios reported, the Heritage and Trump questionnaires put heavy emphasis on beliefs rather than credentials. Both documents “are striking for their emphasis on what you believe rather than your accomplishments,” and they “reflect a vision for a centralized administration where people…would pick up the phone and say: ‘Yes, sir.’” The intended outcome is a federal workforce populated top to bottom by people who will never question orders. Imagine thousands of bureaucrats who see themselves not as public servants but as footsoldiers in a political crusade. That is precisely what this approach aims to deliver. By stacking the deck with pre-vetted loyalists, Trump can ensure that the machinery of government answers to him personally and ideologically – not to law, not to neutral principles, and certainly not to the opposition party. In essence, it’s a plan to transform the civil service into a partisan extension of the White House.

Inside the Training: Building a Government of Obedience

How do you ensure that thousands of new loyalists will “follow Trump without question”? Project 2025 has an answer: train them to obey. Leaked internal videos from the Heritage Foundation’s “Presidential Administration Academy” reveal an Orwellian crash course in government takeover​. Over 14 hours of invite-only training sessions (secretly recorded and published by investigative outlets) show former Trump officials coaching an incoming cadre of political appointees on how to seize control of the federal bureaucracy​. The tone is urgent and unapologetically ideological. The message is clear: loyalty to the President and his agenda comes first – traditional nonpartisan norms be damned.

If you’re looking for a truly sobering night of binge-watching, check out the playlist of 23 “Presidential Administration Academy” training videos obtained by ProPublica.

In one video, Rick Dearborn – a veteran of Trump’s 2016 transition – admitted the last Trump administration struggled to fill jobs with the “right” people at first​. This time, Heritage’s pre-screened network is a “luxury we didn’t have in 2016,” Dearborn said, telling trainees that having a database of ideologically vetted personnel ready to step in on Day 1 will be “so important to the next president.” The Academy has essentially groomed a government-in-waiting. And the guidance being privately dispensed is startling in its brazenness:

• Purge Liberal Influence: Trainees are taught to view vast swaths of government policy as illegitimate liberal incursions to be wiped out. In a segment titled “Left-Wing Code Words and Language,” former USAID official Bethany Kozma claims the climate change movement is really a government plot to “control people.” Therefore, “if the American people elect a conservative president, his administration will have to eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere,” she declares​. Similarly, another instructor urges appointees to eliminate any vestige of progressive policy in their agencies. Katie Sullivan, a Trump-era Justice Department official, outlines a plan to erase equity and inclusion efforts: get rid of the administration’s “gender advisor” positions, disband “all the task forces,” scrub “all the equity plans from all the websites,” and “completely rework” the language used in policies and grants. The goal is essentially to ideologically cleanse the federal bureaucracy – down to the very wording of its documents – to reflect only Trump-approved ideas.

• “Us vs. Them” Mentality: The trainers repeatedly cast career civil servants, and even the culture of Washington, D.C., as the enemy. Max Primorac, another former Trump official, warns that the nation’s capital is a hostile environment: “The city does not share your conservative values,” he cautions. He tells incoming appointees not to trust their own agencies’ staff. “Don’t let career bureaucrats hinder you from advancing the president’s agenda,” Primorac says. “They’re hostile to it because you’re here to do something that’s not in their interest.”​ The clear instruction is to ignore or override the nonpartisan professionals (“bureaucrats”) in your department. “You’re here to cut government, you’re here to cut spending, you’re here to cut regulations,” Primorac emphasizes​. In other words, the mission is not to govern impartially but to wage an ideological war from within the government. Any civil servant who objects is by definition an obstacle to be circumvented.

• Avoid Accountability: Perhaps most chilling, the academy coaches Trump’s loyalists on how to evade oversight and public accountability. Multiple speakers advise future officials to avoid engaging with mainstream media or internal watchdogs. Trainees are encouraged to focus only on friendly media outlets that will echo their message – “those are the only ones trusted by [our] voters,” one trainer notes. Even more bluntly, appointees are told not to leave a paper trail. In one session, would-be officials learn to avoid creating written records or emails that Congress or the press could later obtain via the Freedom of Information Act. This flies in the face of a transparent, nonpartisan civil service. Instead, the training promotes a culture of “operate in the shadows, answer only to the President.” It’s a blueprint for turning agencies into political arms of the White House, unchecked by the usual watchdog mechanisms.

Taken together, these leaked videos expose a concerted effort to indoctrinate a new federal workforce in absolute loyalty. The academy’s participants have been told that their duty is not to the Constitution or the public interest in a traditional sense – it is to “the President’s agenda.” They are being steeled to expect resistance from ethical career staff and to bulldoze through it. From cleansing agency websites of words like “diversity” and “climate change,” to shunning independent media and inspectors general, the training preaches an ends-justify-the-means approach which has already begun in earnest. This is how you build a government of obedience: select the faithful, instruct them to subvert the norms, and unleash them to do the boss’s bidding.

The Real-World Firings

Trump and his inner circle have been remarkably transparent about their plans to purge the government – and in his second term, they have wasted no time making it a reality. The mass firings of career officials we are now witnessing flow directly from the groundwork laid by Project 2025. As detailed above, Trump reactivated Schedule F on day one, instantly making thousands of federal employees vulnerable to firing​. This move alone permits an unprecedented politicization of the civil service: anyone in a “policy-related” role can be sacked and replaced with a loyalist at the drop of a hat. During Trump’s first term, Schedule F was just a proposal signed in its waning days (and never implemented before Biden rescinded it). Now, armed with Heritage’s blueprint and a prepared roster of replacements, Trump has returned to that idea with a vengeance. He has ordered agency heads to identify and oust officials deemed disloyal or obstructive, and to do so en masse. By mid-March, the White House was reviewing plans from each agency for a “mass firing of thousands of government workers within the coming weeks,” according to Reuters reporting​. In other words, a political purge of the federal workforce is underway – one that could sweep out not just a handful of high-profile figures, but whole ranks of civil servants across departments.

We’ve already seen vivid examples of this “takeover through termination.” When DHS slashed its civil rights and ombudsman offices in March, it wasn’t because those offices were failing in their jobs – it was because they were doing their jobs, by holding law enforcement accountable. That made them a target. A DHS spokesperson openly accused those career staff of being “internal adversaries” simply for adding “bureaucratic hurdles” (read: oversight and privacy protections) to immigration enforcement. In Trump’s view, neutral arbiters = enemies if they inconvenience his agenda. The mass layoffs and resignations being pushed through government send a clear signal: no neutrality will be tolerated. Trump wants agency employees either on his team or out the door. DHS has gone so far as to conduct polygraph tests to identify “leakers.” This is the mentality driving the firings – a belief that a secret cabal of “deep state” saboteurs lurks in every office, and only a sweeping cleanse can fix it.

Trump’s allies are fully on board with this approach. In fact, outside groups spent the past few years preparing for it. Organizations like the Conservative Partnership Institute (run by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows) and figures like former OMB director Russ Vought have been agitating for Schedule F-style purges since 2021. They helped develop lists of who to fire and who to hire. By the time Trump was campaigning in 2024, pledges to root out the “communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin” in the government became a staple of his rallies. He promised to “totally obliterate the deep state” and institute direct presidential control over every agency. Even before winning, Trump’s team signaled that officials who defied him in the past would be gone. (During the 2020 post-election turmoil, Trump fired or forced out many officials – from Defense Secretary Mark Esper to cybersecurity director Chris Krebs – largely over personal loyalty. That was a preview of what was to come.)

Now in 2025, Trump is following through. Federal employee unions and public service advocates are alarmed. They’ve filed multiple lawsuits challenging the Schedule F order and the legality of these purges​. Union leaders warn that decades of nonpartisan expertise are being thrown away. “Our communities will pay the price if these anti-government extremists are allowed to undo decades of progress,” AFSCME president Lee Saunders said after Trump’s latest order, noting that critical services could suffer when experienced staff are removed for political reasons​. The Trump camp, however, is unapologetic. To them, “civil service” is just another name for the deep state. In their view, every federal employee should ultimately answer to the President – or be fired until the message gets through.

This strategy isn’t just about a few high-profile firings; it is about changing the DNA of the U.S. government. By sweeping away career professionals en masse and replacing them with ideological allies, Trump is attempting to eliminate the very concept of a nonpartisan administrative state. In its place, he envisions a workforce that is loyal to him personally and to his political movement. It’s a profound shift: the United States has traditionally had a professional civil service precisely to avoid the spoils system of handing out jobs to political loyalists. Trump’s “Schedule F” gambit and ongoing purges invert that principle. The real reason he’s firing everyone is to ensure that no one in the federal apparatus can serve as a check, a whistleblower, or an independent expert that might contradict him. From scientists to intelligence analysts to lawyers, anyone who is not “on the team” could be on the chopping block. This is a loyalty purge, plain and simple – the kind of thing one might expect in an autocracy, not a democracy. Yet it is happening right now in America.

Conclusion

What we are witnessing is a coordinated and far-advanced plan to transform the U.S. government into a tool to further a specific, well-documented conservative agenda. Project 2025 isn’t a partisan wish list that might be watered down in practice – it is an outright blueprint for partisan control of the bureaucracy, and it’s being executed to the letter. The mass firings, the loyalty-focused hiring, the indoctrination of new officials, and the blitz of policy rollbacks all serve a single aim: to entrench Trump (and Trumpism) in every corner of the federal government. Career civil servants – the tax auditors, scientists, lawyers, diplomats, and analysts who traditionally stay through administrations of both parties – are being cast as a fifth column to be eliminated. In their place will be operatives who owe their jobs to political patronage and ideological allegiance. This represents a fundamental break with American governance as we know it.

The stakes of allowing this takeover to proceed could not be higher. If successful, it would mean that neutral law enforcement and regulatory agencies become extensions of the ruling party. Environmental protections, civil rights enforcement, public health policy – all would be dictated solely by political loyalty, not expertise or evidence. Inspectors general could be sidelined or ignored, as already encouraged in the Heritage training videos. Whistleblowers will think twice, especially if their superiors were chosen for loyalty above all. Future presidents will inherit a workforce stacked with the previous administration’s loyalists (or hollowed out of talent altogether). In short, the impartial foundations of the federal government are presently being irreparably cracked.

It’s important to underscore: this is not a drill. The effort to remake the government in Trump’s image is well underway and accelerating. The people designing it have been astonishingly frank about their intentions – they literally wrote a 920-page plan and openly call it a way to “take down the deep state.”​ They are training footsoldiers, readily equipped with lists of who will fill the newly created vacancies in federal government. Make no mistake, they are actively cutting down the old guard to make room for the new. This isn’t about policy differences or “draining” inefficiencies; it’s about power – seizing it, centralizing it, and punishing any who resist. It’s the real reason behind all the firings: to leave no dissenting voice within government that could check Trump’s hand.

Americans are now at a crossroads. Will the federal government become a partisan machine, or will the merit-based civil service survive this onslaught? The coming months will reveal just how far this gutting of the administrative state will go. What’s certain is that the plan’s operatives are moving with purpose and speed. The alarm bells are ringing, and democracy’s defenders have little time to respond. The fate of the nation’s institutions may well depend on whether the public understands that Trump’s purge is not a “house cleaning” – it’s an attempted hostile takeover from within. The clock is ticking, and the coup is in progress. The question now is whether anyone can stop it before it irreversibly transforms the American government.

Sources: The above reporting is drawn from official documents, leaked videos, and investigative reports, including Heritage Foundation materials, coverage by Axios, ProPublica, The Guardian, Reuters, and others. Key references include the Project 2025 policy agenda and timeline, internal training video transcripts​, the Heritage Foundation’s personnel recruitment site, and news of Trump’s recent executive orders and their fallout​. These sources paint a consistent picture: Trump’s firing spree is part of a deliberate plan to rebuild the government with loyalists, as outlined by Project 2025. The evidence is in plain view – we need only connect the dots.