What did Donald Trump do today?

He gave himself the power to fire civil servants for telling him things he doesn't want to hear.

Trump went to the hospital last Tuesday for a "physical," after which he did not appear in public or in front of a camera for an entire week. Today, he finally emerged at a signing ceremony, with unexplained facial swelling, appearing both agitated and exhausted.

The occasion was his signing of an executive order that purports to make at least 8,000 senior federal government employees "at-will," meaning that they can be fired for any reason or no reason at all. Under existing laws, politicians need a valid reason like poor performance to fire most federal employees.

Civil service protection laws were put in place to prevent corruption. When government employees, especially those in supervisory positions, can be fired at the whim of a president, then they are more vulnerable to pressure to act in the president's interests rather than the public interest. This isn't a theoretical problem: it was the driving force behind the rampant government corruption of the late 19th century. 

Trump routinely refuses to acknowledge findings by the federal government that he doesn't like, or that are politically damaging to him, calling them the work of the "deep state," a supposed shadowy conspiracy against him. 

In effect, Trump's order would give him the power to force government employees to choose between keeping their jobs, or doing their work in an honest and nonpartisan fashion, whenever their duties conflicted with what Trump wanted them to do or say. For example, he could force the Treasury Department to cook the books on critical inflation or unemployment statistics—just like he accused previous administrations of doing. 

A Trump spokesperson today claimed that all the order was intended to do was make sure that federal employees followed all "lawful" instructions. But there would be nothing strictly illegal about Trump demanding that a government medical researcher issue a report that wind turbines cause cancer, or that household cleaning products could be taken internally to cure COVID. He could force the NIJ, which compiles crime statistics for the federal government, to "find" that undocumented immigrants commit more crimes than native-born citizens, even though the opposite is true.

Trump has gone on a stock-buying spree lately, often in companies that have subsequently announced lucrative government contracts, driving up the value of his investments. He could make government auditors—the exact people whose job it is to prevent waste and fraud—come up with fake "reasons" after the fact that seem to justify those contracts, insulating him against prosecution from corruption after leaving office. He could make research scientists at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry choose between warning the public about a dangerous chemical made by a company he'd invested in, and losing their jobs.

Or, to take an example from today's headlines, Trump could have simply pressured USDA field agents not to confirm that screwworms, the devastating cattle parasite, had been found in Texas. This would have allowed him to dodge responsibility for needlessly killing the cheap and effective government program that had kept them from spreading northward into the United States. 

It also means that Trump could simply continue his pattern of firing people he suspects for demographic reasons of being "disloyal" to him, as with his purge of female and Black military leaders.

Why does this matter?

• The federal government owes its allegiance to the American people, not Donald Trump personally.