The Trump administration requires loyalty to the president within the conditions for appointing employees at the White House

The Axius website revealed that the new White House’s employment guidelines, which were sent to federal agencies last week, include what appears to be a presidential loyalty test, according to the current and precedent federal employees and critics of President Donald Trump’s administration.

The memo aims to serve as guidelines for the concentration of employment on merit, which is the latest step from the Trump administration to politicize the civil service, which undermines more than a century of laws and traditions that aim to isolate professional employees from politics, according to critics.

Candidates for civil service jobs – including cleaners, nurses, surgeons, engineers, lawyers and economists – will be asked – four questions about their patriotism and their support for the policy of the president.

They must answer in the form of an article, with a maximum of 200 words, and to confirm that they did not seek artificial intelligence.

The third question that receives great attention is: “How will it help enhance the president’s executive orders and his policy priorities in this position?”

The question continues: “Select an executive or two important political initiatives for you, and explain how you will help implement them if you are appointed.”

These questions have nothing to do with the candidate’s merit or skills, says Jerry Boutels, the former director of human resources that led the Human Resources Department of NASA and managed the Human Resources Department in other federal agencies for decades.

“When you employ, you must, according to the traditional law, focus on the knowledge, skills and capabilities required for the position,” she says.

These questions are “philosophical. It is not even efficient. I am completely not sure how to evaluate it.”

Potkles says that dealing with these questions may slow the recruitment process, which contradicts the declared goal of the guidelines of accelerating them.

A current federal human resources official told Goovernment Executive These plans combined “will make employment more difficult, not less.”

Adam Bunika, a political scientist at Stanford University, wrote in a publication on Substack On Sunday: “The civil service based on merit, which took generations to be built, is dismantled by a note.”

On the other hand, an official from the Personnel Management Office defended the questions as legal and within the limits of the president’s authority.

The official added: “The president has the authority to supervise the executive authority and a clear legal authority to ask these questions to potential employees. He does not impose a test of loyalty by doing so.”

Supporters of the new procedure say that the law requires agencies to act in line with the legal executive orders of the president and his policy priorities, which makes it reasonable to request examples of what raises the enthusiasm of the candidates.

Agencies will decide whether to use questions and how they will use them.

Since Trump took over the second presidency, he expelled the White House or paid more than 100,000 federal employees to leave their jobs, which led to the expulsion of many talents from the government.

Now they will be replacing these people with supporters, says Max Stir, head of the non -profit public service partnership organization.

He adds: “They empty the administrative structure of the current non -party expert staff, and they re -fill it with loyalists.”

Trump resented the rejection he faced from the “deep” federal government employees in his first term, and focuses in his current term to ensure that this is not repeated.