Project 2025's White House Office Plan: A Blueprint to Centralize Power and Sideline Career Staff
Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership chapter on the White House Office proposes restructuring the White House to centralize control and bypass career civil servants—a plan partly in execution via revived Schedule F orders and mass reclassifications. The chapter's contributors include over a dozen Heritage and allied scholars, though the full 300+ span all 30 chapters. This plan undermines the Pendleton Act, Inspector General independence, and congressional oversight.
The White House Office reforms in Project 2025 are not merely administrative tweaks; they are a blueprint to concentrate executive power unilaterally. By proposing to centralize control and bypass career staff, the plan directly undermines the merit-based civil service system established by the Pendleton Act of 1883. This system was created precisely to prevent the patronage and cronyism that had previously corrupted federal hiring and made agencies unresponsive to law, not loyalty. The current administration has already enacted the foundational piece of this plan: Executive Order 14170, signed January 20, 2025, which revived and expanded Schedule F, stripping tens of thousands of career employees of their civil service protections and reclassifying them as at-will appointees. Mass firings began in February 2025 under OPM guidance, and over a dozen Project 2025 contributors have been placed into senior agency roles without Senate confirmation, as AFGE and others have documented.
This is a direct attack on the constitutional separation of powers. Schedule F makes career experts—scientists, inspectors, enforcement staff—vulnerable to removal for resisting political demands, effectively silencing whistleblowers and corrupting oversight. The plan’s stated goal, articulated by Heritage Foundation authors, is to make “empowering political appointees across the Administration … crucial to a President’s success.” But this maximalist unitary executive theory ignores Congress’s power of the purse and its oversight role. Inspectors general, who provide the immune system of a republic, have already been fired and replaced with loyalists. A democratically accountable alternative would reverse these actions: rescind EO 14170, reinstate removed IGs, restore Senate confirmation norms for agency leaders, and codify permanent protections for career civil servants through legislation like the Saving the Civil Service Act. As of now, the administration has not yet restructured the White House Office itself as the chapter proposes, but the clock is ticking on that step too.
Rollback path — how this gets undone
This action has already been implemented. These are the concrete levers that could reverse it.
- Rescind EO 14170 The President must sign an executive order rescinding Schedule F reclassification, restoring all career employees to their former competitive service status with full civil service protections.
- Pass the Saving the Civil Service Act Congress should enact legislation codifying that policy-influencing positions remain in the competitive service, requiring cause for removal and preventing future administrations from reinstating Schedule F via executive action.
- Litigate under AFGE v. Trump Lawsuits by federal employee unions should seek immediate injunctions against illegal firings, reinstatement with back pay, and negotiated grievance procedures for affected employees.
- Pass the Inspector General Protection Act Congress should require 30-day notice and a statement of cause for any IG removal, restoring independence and preventing political firings.
- Restore Senate confirmation norms The President should commit to nominating Senate-confirmed appointees for all senior roles, ending the use of acting officials to bypass Senate oversight, and Congress should use appropriations riders to bar funding for unconfirmed acting officials beyond legal limits.
Original source — excerpted
project2025 Project 2025 ch. 1: White House Office (pp 25-29)"— xxv — Contributors T he contributors listed below generously volunteered their time and effort to assist the authors in the development and writing of this volume’s 30 chapters. The policy views and reform proposals herein are not an all-inclu- sive catalogue of conservative ideas for the next President, nor is there unanimity among the contributors or the organizations with which they are affiliated with regard to the recommendations. Mark Albrecht Chris Anderson, Office of Senator Steve Daines Jeff Anderson, The American Main Street Initiative Michael Anton, Hillsdale College EJ Antoni, The Heritage Foundation Andrew “Art” Arthur , Center for Immigration Studies Paul Atkins, Patomak Global Partners Julie Axelrod, Center for Immigration Studies James Bacon James Baehr Stewart Baker, Steptoe and Johnson LLP Erik Baptist, Alliance Defending Freedom Brent Bennett, Texas Public Policy Foundation John Berlau, Competitive Enterprise Institute Russell Berman, Hoover Institution Sanjai Bhagat, University of Colorado Boulder Stephen Billy, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America Brad Bishop, American Cornerstone Institute Willis Bixby, WWBX, LLC Josh Blackman, South Texas College of Law …"