Policy Advocate
William Ford is a Policy Specialist at Protect Democracy, where he supports the organization’s work to strengthen legislative guardrails against abuses of executive power. He focuses in particular on reforms to strengthen Congress’s power of the purse and oversight authorities. Ford also supports litigation seeking accountability for abuses of power. Previously, Ford was an Appellate Litigation Fellow in the New York Attorney General’s Office. He has written for Lawfare and interned in the ACLU’s National Security Project. Ford graduated from the College of the Holy Cross with a degree in international studies.
The Office of Personnel Management recently announced a proposed rule to reinforce protections for federal civil servants against Schedule F.
October 28, 2022
Thirteen days before he lost the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump tried to remake the federal government.
On Oct. 21, he issued an executive order creating a new category of federal employment, known as Schedule F, in which his administration claimed public servants could be hired and fired at will. An estimated 50,000 career federal employees — the people who ensure the safety of the drugs we take and the food we eat — would have been swept into this category and, had the order survived legal review, purportedly stripped of their employment protections.
Defeating authoritarianism is going to take all of us. Everyone and every institution has a role to play. Together, we can protect democracy.
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