Key debate takeaways for federal employees

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump on Sept. 10 held the first debate as their respective party’s presidential nominee. Here are the statements and disagreements that federal employees should pay attention to:

Project 2025 

Dozens of former high-ranking officials in the Trump administration have worked on a Heritage Foundation-led initiative called Project 2025 to help the next GOP president transition into the White House. A tenet of it is removing civil service job protections for tens of thousands of federal workers in “policy-related” positions, effectively making them at-will employees. 

Trump has tried to distance himself from the project due to its widespread unpopularity, and Harris was quick to bring it up at the debate. However the former president again distanced himself from the document. 

“Number one, I have nothing to do — as you know and as she knows better than anyone — I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” he said. “That's out there. I haven't read it. I don't want to read it purposely. I'm not going to read it.”

Immigration and Law Enforcement

Harris spoke positively of a bipartisan Senate border security bill that would provide the Homeland Security and Justice departments with significant staffing increases, hiring flexibilities and pay reforms. 

"The United States Congress, including some of the most conservative members of the United States Senate, came up with a border security bill, which I supported, and that bill would have put 1,500 more border agents on the border to help those folks who are working there right now,” Harris said. 

The measure died after Trump expressed opposition to it. The GOP candidate brought up his proposal to deport the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. However he didn’t offer specifics on how he would do that. 

Harris also criticized the former president for his calls to defund the Justice Department and FBI in relation to the prosecutions against him.  

Peaceful Transition

Regardless of who wins in November, federal employees — and the country — will experience a change in presidential administration. 

Trump skirted a question about whether he would’ve done anything differently on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol where lawmakers were certifying Joe Biden’s election win. "I had nothing to do with that, other than they asked me to make a speech," he said. "I showed up for a speech."

The former president also reiterated the longstanding falsehood that he won in 2020 based on unproven and broad claims of election fraud. 

“We cannot afford to have a president of the United States who attempts, as he did in the past, to upend the will of the voters in a free and fair election,” Harris said. 

Retaining appointees 

Harris touted the more than 200 staffers for former Republican President George W. Bush and GOP presidential candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney, as well as other Republicans, who have endorsed her. 

“If you want to really know the inside track on who the former president is, if he didn't make it clear already, just ask people who have worked with him. His former chief of staff, a four star general, has said he has contempt for the Constitution of the United States,” she said. “His former national security adviser has said he is dangerous and unfit. His former secretary of defense has said the nation, the republic, would never survive another Trump term.”

However Trump took it as an opportunity to attack the Biden-Harris administration for not removing poor performing officials. 

“I'm a different kind of a person. I fired most of those people, not so graciously,” he said. “They did bad things or a bad job. I fired them.”