Trump 2.0: A regime awash in anxiety

Job-seekers hoping to join the new Trump administration are facing a series of intense loyalty tests, with White House screening teams fanning out to check for MAGA bona fides and carefully evaluating applicants' social media posts.

President Donald Trump has long said he believes the biggest mistake he made during his first term was hiring ‘the wrong kinds of people’. Now, his aides are working aggressively to ensure the government is filled only with loyalists.

Negative social media posts have been enough to derail applications. Those seeking jobs have been told they will have to prove their ‘enthusiasm’ to enact Trump's agenda and asked when their moment of ‘MAGA revelation’ occurred. One federal employee said they briefly considered buying Trump's crypto meme coin in case the president's team asked about their voting record.

The intense screening has led some federal workers to question whether Trump's team cares more about loyalty than competence. There is concern that his team is ousting foreign policy and national security diplomats and others who could offer the administrative expertise and institutional knowledge at a time of conflict worldwide.

Trump officials, whoever, have made no secret of their intention to fill the administration with hires who share the president's vision. They began checking potential staffers shortly after Trump launched his campaign. An application form on the Trump transition website asks candidates, “What part of President Trump's campaign message is most appealing to you and why?" according to a link obtained by the Associated Press.

It also asks how they supported Trump in the 2024 election — with choices including volunteering, fundraising, door-knocking and making phone calls — and requests a list of their social media handles.

“We are interviewing every single one of these individuals. If you are working in the federal government in a political appointee position, that comes through the White House now,” White House personnel director Sergio Gor said Thursday, 23 January, on Fox News.

Trump, he said, “has been very clear of who he doesn't want to include in this administration. And so those are clear guidelines that we adhere to. And we bring the best people possible into the White House and into every department across this land.”

Screening teams deploy across federal agencies

Some officials have referred to the newcomers sent by the White House to federal agencies disparagingly as “MAGA commissars”, a reference to Communist Party officials from the former Soviet Union.

They are generally young and many do not appear to have particular expertise or background in the portfolios of the agencies in which they are working, according to three US officials, who (like others) spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

They said the screeners seem to be looking for even the slightest divergence between candidates and Trump's MAGA movement and ‘America First’ policies.

A negative social media post or a photograph with a Trump opponent has been enough for some applications to be rejected or put on hold for further review.

One official said he and several colleagues from various agencies had been told that even if they passed the initial vetting process to be admitted into the applicant pool, they would still need to prove their bona fides, including by providing references from people whose loyalty had already been established.

At the state department, which has been a particular Trump target since his first term, current officials have described the atmosphere as “tense” and “glum”, with career civil and foreign service officers leery of voicing opinions on policy or personnel matters, let alone politics, fearing retribution from their new political bosses.

Two longtime department officials noted that there is always a period of uncertainty with any change of administration, but the current transition to a group intent on making sweeping changes to the management and work of the department was unlike anything they had experienced in the past.

Checking for MAGA alignment

The Trump administration has clear plans for a screening process to ensure all officials inside the administration — and especially those who could help shape policy — are aligned with Trump's agenda.

One longtime government employee said he ran into a senior official in December who told him that Trump's team would look to be more ‘thoughtful’ about how they were vetting appointees and even detailees. The latter are non-political career experts on topics that range from counterterrorism to global climate policy, who are loaned to the White House from other agencies for extended assignments.

All appointees, this person said, would be issued questionnaires to ensure they were fully committed to Trump's agenda.

The AP has reported that career civil servants who work on the White House National Security Council have been questioned by senior Trump administration officials about which candidate they voted for in the election, their political contributions and whether they have made social media posts that could be considered incriminating by Trump's team.

On Wednesday, 22 January, roughly 160 NSC detailees who worked in the Biden administration were told that they were being sent home so Trump's team could conduct a review to ensure its personnel aligned with the president's agenda.

One NSC director learned that every detailee would be screened and queried on whom they voted for, political contributions and social media postings, according to a person familiar with the matter.

White House officials defend their approach

“No one should be surprised that those being hired should align with the mission of the administration. Nobody in private industry would ever hire someone who isn't mission focused, and the government should be no different,” White House spokesperson Steven Cheung said.

“Over 1,300 individuals have been hired, while maintaining the highest standards of competency,” he added.

Every new president looks to fill the thousands of government jobs they control with political appointees — rewarding campaign aides, allies, supporters and donors with plum positions. The White House presidential personnel office exists to recruit, screen and manage those employees.

Asking applicants their political affiliations is common. In some cases it is required, such as when filling jobs on agencies or commissions that require partisan balance.

Trump's White House, however, is going deeper into potential appointees' political histories in part because he has carved out an ideological space that is often distinct from traditional Republican orthodoxy, making straight partisanship an unreliable indicator of commitment to his agenda.

“The Trump administration's conduct and imposition of a political litmus or loyalty test, it betrays the oath that the president took on Monday to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,” said Donald K Sherman, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group. “What this suggests to me is that demonstrating loyalty is as important or more important than merit.”

Gor, in his Fox interview, had said in addition to hiring, the White House personnel office is also working to root out workers disloyal to Trump.

“We're also cleaning house. And so we started the process of terminating a lot of positions," he said. “It's time for a fresh start.”

Immigration anxieties

Less than a week into his presidency, the Trump administration also touted deportation efforts and published new rules on Friday, 24 January, making it easier to remove people not just from employment but from the country itself.

Amid officials' latest show of force to make good on campaign promises around immigration, waves of worry reverberated in parts of the country, with officials in Newark, New Jersey, lashing out over what they called illegal arrests by immigration agents.

President Donald Trump's administration portrayed the US military planes that touched down in Central America carrying migrants as a start of deportations and announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement made 593 arrests on Friday and 538 on Thursday, 23 January.

He also sent US soldiers and Marines to the US–Mexico border and lifted longtime rules restricting immigration enforcement near schools and churches.

Many of the ICE actions were not unusual. Similar deportation flights also took place under the Biden administration, though not using military planes. ICE averaged 311 daily arrests in the fiscal year that ended Sept 30. President Joe Biden also sent active duty troops to the border in 2023 and numerous administrations have sent National Guard troops to assist Customs and Border Protection.

However, rumours of arrests and news reports or social media posts about the presence of agents sparked worries in communities around the country.

Some rights groups launched plans to protect immigrants in the event of arrests at schools or workplaces.

Chicago Public Schools officials on Friday mistakenly believed ICE agents had come to one of their elementary schools and put out statements to that effect before learning the agents were from the Secret Service. It heightened fears among immigrant communities in the country's third-largest city.

There is widespread support in America for beefing up security at the southern border and undertaking some targeted deportations, particularly of people who committed violent crimes, according to a survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That poll also found that most Americans think local police should cooperate with federal immigration authorities on deportations in at least some cases.

But support falls considerably when it comes to deporting people in the country illegally who have not been convicted of a crime.

Newark officials say ICE went too far

Mayor Ras Baraka said ICE agents showed up at a business on Thursday for what he called a warrantless raid and detained three “undocumented residents” as well as some US citizens. He said one person was questioned even after showing military identification.

The city is just across the Hudson River from New York. Half of the population of 305,000 is Black and nearly 40 per cent is Hispanic.

“When I got this information, I was appalled, upset, angry that this would happen here, in this state, in this country,” Baraka, a Democrat who is seeking the party's nomination for governor, said at a news conference. “We're going to fight for all of our residents in this city, no matter what that looks like for us.”

ICE confirmed it had conducted a “targeted enforcement operation” at a Newark business and that some of the people agents encountered were US citizens who were asked for identification. ICE said it could not comment further because the investigation was still active.

While Trump has vowed a campaign of mass deportations, his White House border czar has repeatedly said that they will be targeted operations focused initially on specific people who have committed crimes.

Amy Torres, executive director of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, disputed that what happened Thursday was a ‘targeted’ approach, saying that type of language suggests “some deep intel and prior investigation”. She said her organisation got a call when ICE arrived.

"If this is such a sterile and targeted operation, why was a US citizen interrogated?” Torres said.

She and other officials declined to identify the business, but the owner of Ocean Seafood Depot spoke to reporters, saying the government should go after “bad people, not working people.”

Expanding “expedited removal” authority

The Trump administration said on Friday, 24 January, that it was expanding “expedited removal” authority so it can be used across the country right away.

“The effect of this change will be to enhance national security and public safety — while reducing government costs — by facilitating prompt immigration determinations,” the administration said in a notice in the Federal Register outlining the new rules.

“Expedited removal” gives enforcement agencies broad authority to deport people without requiring them to appear before an immigration judge. There are limited exceptions, including if they express fear of returning home and pass an initial screening interview for asylum.

Critics have said there's too much risk that people who have the right to be in the country will be mistakenly swept up by agents and officers and that not enough is done to protect migrants who have genuine reason to fear being sent home. Friday's notice said the person put into expedited removal “bears the affirmative burden to show to the satisfaction of an immigration officer” that they have the right to be in the US.

The powers were created under a 1996 law. But they weren't really widely used until 2004, when Homeland Security said it would use expedited removal authority for people arrested within two weeks of entering the US by land and caught within 160 km of the border. That meant it was used mostly against migrants who had recently arrived.

Military planes for deportations

The Trump administration is also relying on the active-duty military to carry out deportations. After sending about 1,500 troops to San Diego and El Paso, two Air Force C-17 cargo planes carrying migrants removed from the country touched down early Friday morning in Guatemala.

Honduras received two deportation flights Friday carrying a total of 193 people, the foreign ministry confirmed.

However, officials said that this was normal. Antonio García, vice foreign minister of Honduras, said the government has an agreement with the US to accept between 8 and 10 flights a week.

“The big question is how many more flights they will ask us to take,” he told the AP. “We will hear them out and we want them to hear our plans and concerns.”

Ed: PTI inputs edited for length