WASHINGTON – As a former and potentially future president, Donald Trump hailed what would become Project 2025 as a road map for “exactly what our movement will do” with another crack at the White House. As the blueprint for a hard-right turn in America became a liability during the 2024 campaign, Trump pulled an about-face . He denied knowing anything about the “ridiculous and abysmal” plans written in part by his first-term aides and allies. Recommended Videos Now, after being elected the 47th president on Nov. 5, Trump is stocking his second administration with key players in the detailed effort he temporarily shunned. Most notably, Trump has tapped Russell Vought for an encore as director of the Office of Management and Budget; Tom Homan, his former immigration chief, as “border czar;” and immigration hardliner Stephen Miller as deputy chief of policy . Those moves have accelerated criticisms from Democrats who warn that Trump's election hands government reins to movement conservatives who spent years envisioning how to concentrate power in the West Wing and impose a starkly rightward shift across the U.S. government and society. Trump and his aides maintain that he won a mandate to overhaul Washington. But they maintain the specifics are his alone. “President Trump never had anything to do with Project 2025,” said Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt in a statement. “All of President Trumps' Cabinet nominees and appointments are whole-heartedly committed to President Trump's agenda, not the agenda of outside groups.” Here is a look at what some of Trump's choices portend for his second presidency. As budget chief, Vought envisions a sweeping, powerful perch The Office of Management and Budget director, a role Vought held under Trump previously and requires Senate confirmation, prepares a president's proposed budget and is generally responsible for implementing the administration's agenda across agencies. The job is influential but Vought made clear as author of a Project 2025 chapter on presidential authority that he wants the post to wield more direct power. “The Director must view his job as the best, most comprehensive approximation of the President’s mind,” Vought wrote. The OMB, he wrote, “is a President’s air-traffic control system” and should be “involved in all aspects of the White House policy process,” becoming “powerful enough to override implementing agencies’ bureaucracies.” Trump did not go into such details when naming Vought but implicitly endorsed aggressive action. Vought, the president-elect said, “knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State” — Trump’s catch-all for federal bureaucracy — and would help “restore fiscal sanity.” In June, speaking on former Trump aide Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, Vought relished the potential tension: “We’re not going to save our country without a little confrontation.” Vought could help Musk and Trump remake government's role and scope The strategy of further concentrating federal authority in the presidency permeates Project 2025's and Trump's campaign proposals. Vought's vision is especially striking when paired with Trump's proposals to dramatically expand the president's control over federal workers and government purse strings — ideas intertwined with the president-elect tapping mega-billionaire Elon Musk and venture capitalist Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a “Department of Government Efficiency.” Trump in his first term sought to remake the federal civil service by reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers — who have job protection through changes in administration — as political appointees, making them easier to fire and replace with loyalists. Currently, only about 4,000 of the federal government's roughly 2 million workers are political appointees. President Joe Biden rescinded Trump's changes. Trump can now reinstate them. Meanwhile, Musk's and Ramaswamy's sweeping “efficiency” mandates from Trump could turn on an old, defunct constitutional theory that the president — not Congress — is the real gatekeeper of federal spending. In his “Agenda 47,” Trump endorsed so-called “impoundment,” which holds that when lawmakers pass appropriations bills, they simply set a spending ceiling, but not a floor. The president, the theory holds, can simply decide not to spend money on anything he deems unnecessary. Vought did not venture into impoundment in his Project 2025 chapter. But, he wrote, “The President should use every possible tool to propose and impose fiscal discipline on the federal government. Anything short of that would constitute abject failure.” Trump's choice immediately sparked backlash. “Russ Vought is a far-right ideologue who has tried to break the law to give President Trump unilateral authority he does not possess to override the spending decisions of Congress (and) who has and will again fight to give Trump the ability to summarily fire tens of thousands of civil servants,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, a Democrat and outgoing Senate Appropriations chairwoman. Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, leading Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, said Vought wants to “dismantle the expert federal workforce” to the detriment of Americans who depend on everything from veterans' health care to Social Security benefits. “Pain itself is the agenda,” they said. Homan and Miller reflect Trump's and Project 2025's immigration overl ap Trump’s protests about Project 2025 always glossed over overlaps in the two agendas . Both want to reimpose Trump-era immigration limits. Project 2025 includes a litany of detailed proposals for various U.S. immigration statutes, executive branch rules and agreements with other countries — reducing the number of refugees, work visa recipients and asylum seekers, for example. Miller is one of Trump's longest-serving advisers and architect of his immigration ideas, including his promise of the largest deportation force in U.S. history. As deputy policy chief, which is not subject to Senate confirmation, Miller would remain in Trump's West Wing inner circle. “America is for Americans and Americans only,” Miller said at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Oct. 27. “America First Legal,” Miller’s organization founded as an ideological counter to the American Civil Liberties Union, was listed as an advisory group to Project 2025 until Miller asked that the name be removed because of negative attention. Homan, a Project 2025 named contributor, was an acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director during Trump’s first presidency, playing a key role in what became known as Trump's “family separation policy.” Previewing Trump 2.0 earlier this year, Homan said: “No one’s off the table. If you’re here illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder.” Project 2025 contributors slated for CIA and Federal Communications chiefs John Ratcliffe, Trump's pick to lead the CIA , was previously one of Trump's directors of national intelligence. He is a Project 2025 contributor. The document's chapter on U.S. intelligence was written by Dustin Carmack, Ratcliffe's chief of staff in the first Trump administration. Reflecting Ratcliffe's and Trump's approach, Carmack declared the intelligence establishment too cautious. Ratcliffe, like the chapter attributed to Carmack, is hawkish toward China. Throughout the Project 2025 document, Beijing is framed as a U.S. adversary that cannot be trusted. Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, wrote Project 2025's FCC chapter and is now Trump's pick to chair the panel. Carr wrote that the FCC chairman “is empowered with significant authority that is not shared” with other FCC members. He called for the FCC to address “threats to individual liberty posed by corporations that are abusing dominant positions in the market,” specifically “Big Tech and its attempts to drive diverse political viewpoints from the digital town square.” He called for more stringent transparency rules for social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube and “empower consumers to choose their own content filters and fact checkers, if any.” Carr and Ratcliffe would require Senate confirmation for their posts. ___Powering The NVM And Embedded Chip Security Technologies

Arkansas visits skidding Miami in battle of veteran coachesIn August 2024, the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) initiated the recruitment process through the lateral entry scheme by issuing a notification for the recruitment of 45 Joint Secretaries, Directors, and Deputy Secretaries as specialists in government departments. The initiative faced significant opposition from various groups, particularly political parties, which argued that the scheme compromised the reservation rights of Other Backward Classes (OBCs), Scheduled Castes (SCs), and Scheduled Tribes (STs). The strong opposition compelled the government to shelve the plan. This was not the first time that the Union Government has recruited specialists through the lateral entry scheme. In 2018, 63 specialists were appointed through lateral entry in various ministries. Currently, around 57 specialists are working with the government. Even then, recruitment through the lateral entry scheme was excluded from the reservation system. The decision to withdraw the notification has reignited the debate on the need for domain experts within the civil service and highlights the necessity of developing an appropriate approach to civil service reform. Need for domain experts It has long been recognised that specialised skills are much needed in the civil service. In fact, the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (2005) recommended the need for lateral entry into the higher echelons of the government to bring in specialised knowledge and skills, though it did not specify a method of recruitment. The ongoing representation issues of SCs and STs within the civil service further complicate the narrative. Despite existing reservations, the number of SC and ST officers in higher positions remains low. SCs and STs constitute only around 4% and 4.9% of top bureaucratic positions in the Union government at the level of Deputy Secretaries, Directors, Joint Secretaries, and beyond. One reason is that the entry age of officers during the recruitment process is often higher than that of general category candidates, and these officers frequently retire before reaching the top positions. The lateral entry scheme is likely to further limit the representation of these marginalised communities, as the scheme is unlikely to attract domain experts from these communities due to their limited access to such positions in the private sector. For better or worse, the lateral entry debate has been politicised. With caste-based reservations being significant factors in elections, the government is unlikely to reignite this debate, as doing so could have substantial political repercussions. For now, the discussion around lateral entry appears to have reached an impasse. But there is no denying the reality that there is a need for domain experts in the public sector, as each sector is becoming specialised, requiring close collaboration with technical experts. Civil servants are generally generalists, not specialists. Lateral entry, with or without reservation as it existed, was essentially a short-term solution. The need is for domain experts within the civil service itself. It is these domain experts who would cultivate a resilient and effective civil service. To realise this objective, there is a need to develop long-term strategies that prioritise academic-industry-civil service collaboration, capacity building, and institutional development. Integrated model for domain expertise In order to effectively develop domain expertise within the civil service in India and address the ever more complex needs of governance, a collaborative framework that brings together civil service, academia, and industry is needed. This collaboration would facilitate the exchange of knowledge and best practices, allowing civil servants to engage with the latest developments in their respective fields and develop much-needed domain expertise. Civil servants with public sector experience and decision-making capabilities would imbibe insights from academia and industry about emerging trends, skills, and technologies. But this collaboration must differ from the current refresher and mid-career training offered to civil servants. These training programmes for civil servants often act as temporary fixes. Even though such programmes inculcate valuable skills, they fail to create a robust framework for domain expertise. Domain expertise, unlike training programmes, is not an isolated event but must be an integral part of a civil servant’s career trajectory. For domain expertise, an integrated model that aligns with individual career paths and areas of interest is essential. The critical components of an integrated model for developing domain expertise among civil servants include strategic planning, memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with institutions, a rigorous selection process, and specialised postings with fixed tenures. Strategic planning Domain expertise starts with the drafting of a strategic plan to create efficient public policy analysts within the civil service, with locus in the public sector and focus on skills and knowledge from the private sector/industry, facilitated by academia. The objective is to enhance the capacity of civil servants in terms of technical expertise and strategic vision to formulate and implement policies efficiently and effectively in specific sectors, contributing to good governance and improved public service delivery. Strategic planning represents a long-term vision for the civil service and requires identifying the number of sector-specific domain experts needed for better alignment of resources and priorities. Academic institutions must be involved in the strategic planning at the initial stages only. This integrated model has significant advantages for academic institutions as well, as they would receive fresh impetus and motivation to contribute richly to public service delivery. One critical aspect of domain expertise is staying focused on ever-changing innovations and technologies in industry and incorporating these into the public sector. Strategic planning would include an element of circular response planning, with feedback and adjustments continuously incorporated. This element promotes flexibility and adaptability in the face of changing circumstances. MoUs with institutions The second component of the integrated model for developing domain expertise is the framing of MoUs with institutions. The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) of the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances, and Pensions, along with other cadre-controlling ministries, will establish MoUs with premier institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Management, Indian Institutes of Technology, National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Indian Institute of Public Administration, and the top central universities based on the National Institutional Ranking Framework. This collaboration’s primary objective is to formulate tailored courses and training programmes laced with industry experience for transforming current mid-level and top-level officers into domain experts. To start with, each ministry of the Government of India could target developing around four to five domain experts in sector-specific areas over the next few years and ensure the smooth and steady infusion of specialised knowledge and skills into the civil service. The MoUs must ensure that these courses are not usual academic courses, but, specifically, domain expert skill courses. The institutions involved must necessarily engage industry experts for the long term and have their own collaboration with them. Selection process, specialised posting The third but critical component of developing domain experts within the civil service is the establishment of rigorous selection processes for specialised training programmes. This should be jointly done by the ministries concerned and the institutions concerned. Herein, consideration can be given for adequate representation of SCs, STs and OBCs for domain expertise. The selection process should involve submission of a Statement of Purpose (SoP) detailing their motivations for domain expertise and past experiences and interview process to assess a civil servant’s alignment and potential for a domain expertise programme. Through this selection process, and subsequent training, a pool of civil servants would be developed who are not only domain experts but also deeply invested in making a meaningful impact. The last component of the integrated model for domain expertise is specialised posting in their respective areas of expertise, much like the existing lateral entry framework, which appoints personnel based on ministry needs. There should be no transfer of the trained domain experts outside their specialised sector. This targeted approach would address the long-standing issue of “the right minds aren’t in the right places” by ensuring that individuals with the most relevant knowledge and skills are assigned to roles where they can make the greatest impact. Further, irrespective of their years left in the service, a fixed tenure system post training should be set up that allows all domain expert officers equal chances to reach senior roles and contribute richly. Transforming the civil service in India through the integrated model for domain expertise is necessary to strengthen governance and improve public service delivery by developing a resilient and responsive civil service. In today’s market-based economy, the role of government has shifted from being a service provider to that of a facilitator and regulator. Through a cadre of domain experts, the government can build institutional capacity, enabling civil servants to serve effectively as regulators, facilitators, and even service providers. The model also allows civil servants to step away from the daily grind of government machinery to focus on skill development and specialisation. From a psychological perspective, this break from the routine can significantly reduce monotony, re-energising civil servants and enhancing their motivation. By engaging in capacity-building programmes, civil servants can rejuvenate their professional drive, thereby avoiding the “deadwood” effect that often arises in a prolonged career within the government sector. Zubair Nazeer is an Assistant Professor (Public Administration) at the Amar Singh College, Cluster University, Srinagar. He was previously a faculty member at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. The views expressed are personal Published - November 24, 2024 04:40 am IST Copy link Email Facebook Twitter Telegram LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit civil and public service / public officials / government / political parties / Reservation / government departments / election / industrial production / universities and colleges / technology (general) / ministers (government) / scientific institutions / management institutes / economy (general)

WASHINGTON (AP) — As a former and potentially future president, Donald Trump hailed what would become Project 2025 as a road map for “exactly what our movement will do” with another crack at the White House. As the blueprint for a hard-right turn in America became a liability during the 2024 campaign, Trump pulled an about-face . He denied knowing anything about the “ridiculous and abysmal” plans written in part by his first-term aides and allies. Now, after being elected the 47th president on Nov. 5, Trump is stocking his second administration with key players in the detailed effort he temporarily shunned. Most notably, Trump has tapped Russell Vought for an encore as director of the Office of Management and Budget; Tom Homan, his former immigration chief, as “border czar;” and immigration hardliner Stephen Miller as deputy chief of policy . Those moves have accelerated criticisms from Democrats who warn that Trump's election hands government reins to movement conservatives who spent years envisioning how to concentrate power in the West Wing and impose a starkly rightward shift across the U.S. government and society. Trump and his aides maintain that he won a mandate to overhaul Washington. But they maintain the specifics are his alone. “President Trump never had anything to do with Project 2025,” said Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt in a statement. “All of President Trumps' Cabinet nominees and appointments are whole-heartedly committed to President Trump's agenda, not the agenda of outside groups.” Here is a look at what some of Trump's choices portend for his second presidency. The Office of Management and Budget director, a role Vought held under Trump previously and requires Senate confirmation, prepares a president's proposed budget and is generally responsible for implementing the administration's agenda across agencies. The job is influential but Vought made clear as author of a Project 2025 chapter on presidential authority that he wants the post to wield more direct power. “The Director must view his job as the best, most comprehensive approximation of the President’s mind,” Vought wrote. The OMB, he wrote, “is a President’s air-traffic control system” and should be “involved in all aspects of the White House policy process,” becoming “powerful enough to override implementing agencies’ bureaucracies.” Trump did not go into such details when naming Vought but implicitly endorsed aggressive action. Vought, the president-elect said, “knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State” — Trump’s catch-all for federal bureaucracy — and would help “restore fiscal sanity.” In June, speaking on former Trump aide Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, Vought relished the potential tension: “We’re not going to save our country without a little confrontation.” The strategy of further concentrating federal authority in the presidency permeates Project 2025's and Trump's campaign proposals. Vought's vision is especially striking when paired with Trump's proposals to dramatically expand the president's control over federal workers and government purse strings — ideas intertwined with the president-elect tapping mega-billionaire Elon Musk and venture capitalist Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a “Department of Government Efficiency.” Trump in his first term sought to remake the federal civil service by reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers — who have job protection through changes in administration — as political appointees, making them easier to fire and replace with loyalists. Currently, only about 4,000 of the federal government's roughly 2 million workers are political appointees. President Joe Biden rescinded Trump's changes. Trump can now reinstate them. Meanwhile, Musk's and Ramaswamy's sweeping “efficiency” mandates from Trump could turn on an old, defunct constitutional theory that the president — not Congress — is the real gatekeeper of federal spending. In his “Agenda 47,” Trump endorsed so-called “impoundment,” which holds that when lawmakers pass appropriations bills, they simply set a spending ceiling, but not a floor. The president, the theory holds, can simply decide not to spend money on anything he deems unnecessary. Vought did not venture into impoundment in his Project 2025 chapter. But, he wrote, “The President should use every possible tool to propose and impose fiscal discipline on the federal government. Anything short of that would constitute abject failure.” Trump's choice immediately sparked backlash. “Russ Vought is a far-right ideologue who has tried to break the law to give President Trump unilateral authority he does not possess to override the spending decisions of Congress (and) who has and will again fight to give Trump the ability to summarily fire tens of thousands of civil servants,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, a Democrat and outgoing Senate Appropriations chairwoman. Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, leading Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, said Vought wants to “dismantle the expert federal workforce” to the detriment of Americans who depend on everything from veterans' health care to Social Security benefits. “Pain itself is the agenda,” they said. Trump’s protests about Project 2025 always glossed over overlaps in the two agendas . Both want to reimpose Trump-era immigration limits. Project 2025 includes a litany of detailed proposals for various U.S. immigration statutes, executive branch rules and agreements with other countries — reducing the number of refugees, work visa recipients and asylum seekers, for example. Miller is one of Trump's longest-serving advisers and architect of his immigration ideas, including his promise of the largest deportation force in U.S. history. As deputy policy chief, which is not subject to Senate confirmation, Miller would remain in Trump's West Wing inner circle. “America is for Americans and Americans only,” Miller said at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Oct. 27. “America First Legal,” Miller’s organization founded as an ideological counter to the American Civil Liberties Union, was listed as an advisory group to Project 2025 until Miller asked that the name be removed because of negative attention. Homan, a Project 2025 named contributor, was an acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director during Trump’s first presidency, playing a key role in what became known as Trump's “family separation policy.” Previewing Trump 2.0 earlier this year, Homan said: “No one’s off the table. If you’re here illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder.” John Ratcliffe, Trump's pick to lead the CIA , was previously one of Trump's directors of national intelligence. He is a Project 2025 contributor. The document's chapter on U.S. intelligence was written by Dustin Carmack, Ratcliffe's chief of staff in the first Trump administration. Reflecting Ratcliffe's and Trump's approach, Carmack declared the intelligence establishment too cautious. Ratcliffe, like the chapter attributed to Carmack, is hawkish toward China. Throughout the Project 2025 document, Beijing is framed as a U.S. adversary that cannot be trusted. Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, wrote Project 2025's FCC chapter and is now Trump's pick to chair the panel. Carr wrote that the FCC chairman “is empowered with significant authority that is not shared” with other FCC members. He called for the FCC to address “threats to individual liberty posed by corporations that are abusing dominant positions in the market,” specifically “Big Tech and its attempts to drive diverse political viewpoints from the digital town square.” He called for more stringent transparency rules for social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube and “empower consumers to choose their own content filters and fact checkers, if any.” Carr and Ratcliffe would require Senate confirmation for their posts.

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