President-elect Donald Trump is bringing back a top White House official who led his first-term campaign to make it easier to fire public officials.
James Sherk, who served as special assistant on domestic policy during Trump’s first term, will return to the White House Domestic Policy Council, Trump announced Saturday. Sherk worked at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute during the Biden administration.
Sherk was instrumental in the Trump administration’s efforts to facilitate the firing of some federal employees using a classification called Schedule F. That effort sparked an outcry from public officials, and the Biden administration moved quickly to reverse course.
But the effort “could, and should, be reissued by another president,” Sherk wrote in a 2022 article. Wall Street Journal opinion article titled “The president needs the power to fire bureaucrats.”
The incoming Trump administration has made clear that it plans to implement drastic reforms to the federal workforce, and Sherk is poised to be instrumental in those efforts. Trump has promised to “tear up the deep state” and make it easier to fire “rogue bureaucrats.”
During the Biden administration, Sherk filed Freedom of Information Act requests with multiple agencies seeking emails from career staffers mentioning Trump or President Joe Biden around the time of the 2020 election and inauguration. of 2021, he said. he told POLITICO’s E&E News in 2022.
“While, of course, it’s perfectly fine for federal employees to have their own political opinions, it’s interesting to know the extent to which those opinions differ from those of the American electorate,” Sherk said at the time.
Journalist Kevin Bogardus contributed.