Senior Career Vacancies Mean Trump Can Fill 300 Key Permanent Jobs
In addition to the thousands of political appointees Donald Trump will place in the government, there are 300 Senior Executive Service jobs that the Biden administration was in the process of filling, which Trump will now be able to fill, a Daily Wire review of government job ads found.
The SES, as it is known, is what many mean when they think of the “deep state.” They are career civil servants who are paid over $200,000 a year, and are often involved in high-level policy, yet are considered permanent government employees whose term does not end with a president. They are difficult to fire, typically Democrats, and have their own lobbying organization.
But the SES could be a valuable resource for Trump, giving him hundreds of extra high-level jobs to fill, beyond the approximately 3,000 political appointees who comprise a small fraction of the federal workforce. The SES level is a crucial layer that could either cause Trump’s policies to filter from executive suites to the rank-and-file, or isolate political appointees and obstruct their efforts.
If Trump exerts his influence on the hiring of these employees, it could have a lasting effect on the government that outlives his presidency. On his first day in office, he signaled his intent to do just that, signing an executive order called “Restoring Accountability for Career Senior Executives.”
“SES officials have enormous influence over the functioning of the Federal Government,” it said. “Because SES officials wield significant governmental authority, they must serve at the pleasure of the President.” It said Executive Resource Boards, which evaluate resumes and make hiring recommendations for SES jobs, should be reconstituted with majority political appointees. Another executive order issued a hiring freeze to prevent the bureaucracy from racing to fill the jobs without Trump’s input.
But the fact that 300 jobs are currently vacant gives the Trump team the ability to fill them quickly and supercharge the administration’s early efforts.
They include top HR roles, a position that could have a cascading effect, ensuring that other hires won’t obstruct the administration. (Trump last week requested the resignation of the State Department’s HR chief, and she retired, despite being a career employee.) Here are some of those jobs:
- DOJ: Director of Human Resources
- ICE: Deputy Chief Human Capital Officer
- Citizenship and Immigration Services: Head of HR
- Customs and Border Protection: Executive Director, Workforce Care
- Department of the Interior: Deputy Associate Director for Human Resources
- Centers for Disease Control: Principal Deputy Director, Office of Human Resources
- Office of Personnel Management: Director, Office of Civil Rights
The jobs also include slots for Inspectors General, which find waste, fraud, and abuse in government. IGs could, in effect, function like the Department of Government Efficiency — except that they are empowered to make criminal referrals.
- Federal Trade Commission: Inspector General
- Homeland Security: Assistant Inspector General for Audits of Emergency Management & Preparedness
- Justice: Deputy Assistant Inspector General for Audits
- Housing and Urban Development: OIG Chief of Staff and OIG Deputy Assistant Inspector General for Audit
- Labor: Deputy Assistant Inspector General for Audit
They include jobs overseeing how money is spent:
- Treasury: Deputy Assistant Commissioner for Fiscal Accounting
- Treasury: Director, Office of State and Local Finance
- IRS: Chief Procurement Officer
- USAID: Deputy Chief Financial Officer
- Defense: Deputy General Counsel (Fiscal)
- HHS ACF Deputy Director, Grants Management
- NASA Chief Financial Officer
- NASA Director of Procurement
They give the Trump administration a head start in transforming the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) back into an agency focused on securing the border:
- DHS: Associate Deputy Principal Leal Advisor for Enforcement and Litigation
- DHS: Director of Homeland Identity Intelligence Center
- Customs & Border Patrol: Executive Director of Financial Operations
- DHS: Office of Health Security Chief of Staff
- DOJ Immigration Review: Regional Deputy Chief Immigration Judge
- DHS: Director, Open Source Intelligence Division
- DHS: Several Chief Patrol Agents and Chief Counsels
- Secret Service: Chief Administrative Officer
At the Social Security Administration, there are multiple Deputy Associate Commissioner positions open. At the State Department, whose career employees are notoriously left-leaning, a Managing Director career position is open. Trump can select the Army’s advisor to the United States Ambassador at NATO, avoiding the type of deep state fiasco captured by James O’Keefe in a recent sting.
High-level positions dealing with labor are open, and may no longer be filled with a Democrat unionist:
- National Labor Relations Board Regional Director
- Department of Labor: Deputy Assistant Secretary – Operations and Management
The Deputy Director of Grants and Debarment at the Environmental Protection Agency could — if selected by a Republican president — stop the flow of grants to ineffective “greenwashing” projects and left-wing groups.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is hiring 17 regional deputy executive directors, who, if hired with the new administration in mind, could lead to a national transformation of the agency, which became among the most far-left in the Biden era.
The currently open position for HHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health (paying up to $222,000 with telework eligible) illustrates the power of the SES; the job directly advises the Secretary, yet it has DEI baked in, and the president simply inherits the choice of his predecessor. Applications were accepted from November 15 to November 29, but a hiring decision still hasn’t been made, according to USAJobs.gov.
You can sort and search the 300+ jobs below:
Related: Feds Look To Hire Up To 1,200 New DEI Bureaucrats Before Trump Takes Office