Tuesday’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee was a reminder that the person in charge of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency is nothing more than a political operative. And unless the next president follows Donald Trump’s practice of ignoring norms, we will be stuck with Kash Patel for eight more years.
During Patel’s testimony, he refused to acknowledge that former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election. He doubled down on the baseless claim that FBI agents “weaponized” their law enforcement powers during the Biden administration by investigating Trump and the individuals charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He justified the FBI’s investigations of journalists who reported stories that were unfavorable to the Trump administration. Asked by Democratic Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont if he would pledge not to interfere with the voting in the November elections, Patel replied, “I pledge unequivocally that I will not participate in your charade of lies.”
It would be one thing if we had to endure Patel for only the 27 months remaining in Trump’s presidency. But by statute, the FBI director serves for 10 years. That means that even after Trump leaves office, Patel will serve in one of the nation’s most critical roles for another six years. That raises the dilemma the next president will face — comply with federal statutes that limit personnel decisions or clean house of hacks like Patel who have failed to live up to the apolitical professionalism we should expect of an FBI director.
The next president ought to use this authority aggressively to remove federal employees who lack the requisite qualifications to perform their jobs, or who were hired only because of their answers on Trump’s litmus test.
And it is not just Patel who raises this concern. With the firing, retirements and resignations of federal agents and prosecutors in the past two years, the Trump administration has begun filling vacancies with its own hires. On Tuesday, Patel conceded that he has lowered hiring standards at the FBI, dispensing with the college degree requirement, a change that is likely to render the bureau less equipped to handle increasingly sophisticated threats, such as hacking and cyber intrusions, at the same time that the war with Iran is elevating risks to America’s national security.
Since 2025, all applicants for jobs in the executive branch have been required to answer an essay question discussing their favorite Trump executive order. Last Friday, a judge struck down this requirement as an “ideological litmus test” that violates the First Amendment rights of job applicants for the nonpartisan civil service. But until now, decision-makers in the Trump administration have had the benefit of the essays to screen candidates for loyalty to the president’s political agenda. Those employees will remain in place even after Trump leaves the Oval Office in January 2029.
What is the next president to do?
On the one hand, respecting the civil service laws that permit firing only for just cause is essential to restoring the norms of our democratic institutions. Since 1883, when Congress passed the Pendleton Act, protections for federal workers have permitted the growth of the professional civil service, which serves from administration to administration, independent of political considerations. Disregarding these laws would return us to an earlier era, when presidents relied on a spoils system to replace all federal employees every four years. That system promoted corruption and made it impossible to build a career workforce that developed expertise in their fields.
On the other hand, the next president would otherwise inherit all of the employees hired in the Trump administration, whose lowered standards and essay questions suggests a hiring preference for loyalty over competence.
Ironically, the answer may lie in the Supreme Court’s June decision in Trump v. Slaughter, thought at the time to be a victory for the current president. In that case, the court struck down a federal statute limiting the president’s ability to fire a member of the Federal Trade Commission. Adopting the “unitary executive theory,” the court overturned precedent to find that Congress had encroached on the president’s constitutional powers as chief of the executive branch when it created seven-year terms for FTC commissioners, removable only for ““inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” The court reasoned that under the Constitution, the president is responsible for executing the law, and all other executive branch employees who assist him in executing the law are his subordinates. For that hierarchy to function as intended, the president must be able to fire his subordinates at will.
“Subordinates who exercise the President’s power are subject to removal by him,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. “Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the President, and the President to the people.”
The Trump administration won the case, but the next administration can capitalize on the decision. While the Slaughter case may promote bad public policy that threatens to hollow out the professional civil service in the hands of the wrong president, it also provides legal authority for the next president to fire anyone in the executive branch, at will, without any finding of misconduct whatsoever. The next president ought to use this authority aggressively to remove federal employees who lack the requisite qualifications to perform their jobs, or who were hired only because of their answers on Trump’s litmus test.
And the 48th president should begin that purge with Patel.
The post Here’s how the next president should handle a problem like Kash Patel appeared first on MS NOW.
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