As Donald Trump prepares to take office, news outlets are turning to the Ford School's Don Moynihan about what's on the horizon for civil servant jobs, and the validity of Elon Musk's claims to cut government spending by 2 trillion.
“How the civil service system changed American government” On Point, January 14, 2025 - Moynihan discusses the benefits of having less politically appointed civil servants. "Two other changes that we start to see. One is that there's less obvious corruption in government. And the second is that the performance of government seems to improve.” Moynihan stated, Trump's proposed executive order Schedule F is "this very important but vaguely titled executive order that would give a president the power to turn civil servants into political appointees, and by doing so, allow the president to fire them for any reason." Moynihan also shed light on the general public's opinion of civil servant positions "about 90% of people, and this is bipartisan, say they prefer a more nonpartisan approach. And there's a variety of surveys that have sort of shown that really Trump's proposals do not have broad public support when it comes to managing the public sector. So we need modernization without politicization.”
“Top Democrats warm to Elon Musk’s US government cost-cutting mission” The Financial Times, December 30, 2025 - The Financial Times turned to Moynihan for insight on the likelihood that Elon Musk can uphold a 2 trillion dollar spending cut. Moynihan commented "the math doesn’t really add up." He went on to explain that to accomplish these goals DOGE would have to "go after a good chunk of not just military spending but safety net spending... You simply can’t get to $2tn without draconian cuts across government including very popular services like veterans’ administration.”
