Find and Replace

People-powered, AI-Generated AI-assisted draft, verified, and corrected: Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 Edited and curated by: Guy Wolf *Disclaimer: AI has been known to malfunction “hallucinate” therefore, a human-in-the-middle approach with a separate draft and verification AI has been used to provide the best quality, most accurate apolitical research on this topic Subscribe now Written October 21, 2026 One instruction, two letters In late September 2026, an email went out inside the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs. According to reporting that cites the Associated Press, it told staff to replace “AI” with “SI” in documents, remarks, policy positions, and press materials.[1] The instruction was simple: find two letters, swap in two others. The order behind it was only days old. On September 22, President Donald Trump told the United Nations General Assembly that the United States would officially begin calling artificial intelligence “Super Intelligence.”[2] A week later, on September 29, he signed an executive order titled “Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence.” It tells agencies to use the new term in correspondence, websites, reports, and other non-statutory documents, “to the maximum extent permitted by law.”[3] In his speech, as reported, he said the word “artificial” makes the technology sound fake, and that it is not fake.[4] Here is the part that is easy to miss. The order does not change any law. U.S. statutes still define artificial intelligence in Title 15 of the U.S. Code, and the order simply points back to that definition.[3] So staff are caught in a puzzle. One legal column warns that a blind global find-and-replace can break references to statutes and contracts.[5] Another secondary report says employees do not have to rewrite every archived document.[4] Nobody seems sure what “compliance” looks like. Now go back 145 years. On July 2, 1881, in Washington, a man named Charles Guiteau shot President James Garfield. Guiteau was a disappointed job-seeker who believed strongly in the spoils system, the old habit of handing government jobs to a winning party’s supporters.[6] Garfield died of his wounds. But the push to put the civil service under law did not die with him. A little over a year later, the Pendleton Act was signed.[6] The question underneath Two scenes, 145 years apart, one question: when someone works for the public, who do they answer to? The law and the public they serve, or whoever happens to be in charge this year? This piece does three jobs at once, because the story you asked about does. First, a fact-check. The brief behind this piece contains many specific claims. Some are right, some are out of date, and one mixes up two different dictatorships. Second, a history lesson: what earlier governments did when they tried to control both their workforces and their words. Third, an outlook: what all this means for public services, for the people who deliver them, and for any future president who wants to rebuild a nonpartisan workforce. That is an unusual combination. But the three depend on each other, so we will take them together. A few plain-language definitions first. Civil servants are the career workers who run government programs and stay in their jobs when presidents change. The spoils system gave those jobs to the winning party’s supporters. The merit system hires and fires based on skill and conduct, not party loyalty. What held up, what didn’t The brief is the “source” being checked here. It has no web address, so there is no URL to cite for it. Every claim below was re-checked on October 21, 2026, against independent sources rather than repeating the brief’s own framing. I use four labels, and then give one overall verdict. Established fact, verified independently. The reclassification is real, but smaller than first feared. In February 2026 the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the government’s HR agency, finalized a rule creating “Schedule Policy/Career,” the revived and renamed “Schedule F.” On June 3, 2026, a presidential order moved about 8,000 positions into it. Roughly 97 percent are at GS-15 (the top non-executive pay grade) or higher. OPM had earlier estimated 50,000.[7] People in those jobs lose the standard appeal route and can be removed at will. They can still go to district court over discrimination or retaliation.[8] The workforce shrank by about a tenth. OPM says about 317,000 people left federal service in 2025 and about 68,000 were hired.[9] That is a net drop of about 249,000, or roughly 10.7 percent of the September 2024 base.[9] A GAO count across 22 major agencies found an 11.3 percent drop by January 2026.[10] About 154,000 left through the Deferred Resignation Program (DRP), which paid people to resign.[11] The “trauma” remark is on tape. Russell Vought, now head of the White House budget office, said in a recorded 2023 speech, “We want to put them in trauma,” about career bureaucrats.[12] A loyalty-style hiring question was blocked. The 2025 “Merit Hiring Plan” added an essay question asking applicants which presidential executive orders matter most to them. On September 11, 2026, a federal judge ordered it removed, finding it likely violated applicants’ free-speech rights.[13] Independent-agency protections were struck down in principle. On June 29, 2026, in Trump v. Slaughter, the Supreme Court voted 6–3 to overrule the 1935 precedent Humphrey’s Executor and held that a president may remove commissioners of agencies like the FTC at will.[14] DEI and gender orders hit federal workers directly. Executive Order 14151 ordered DEI offices and positions ended, and OPM told agencies to put DEI staff on leave and plan layoffs. Executive Order 14168 recognized only two sexes in federal policy.[15] Language policing is documented. A leaked memo at a USDA research agency barred more than 100 words and phrases, including “climate change.” NSF grants mentioning climate change fell from 889 in 2023 to 148 in 2025, a 77 percent drop, by one analysis.[16] Court records show agencies used keyword searches to cancel grants in bulk.[17] Stale on arrival. The brief says the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), the body that hears federal workers’ firing appeals, is purposely kept without a quorum. That was true, but it is no longer true. The board lost its quorum in April 2025 after Trump fired Democratic member Cathy Harris and another member retired.[18][19] A new member was sworn in on October 28, 2025, and MSPB says its quorum was intact as of August 28, 2026.[20] So the gap lasted about six and a half months. On “purposely”: the firing was deliberate, but whether breaking the quorum was the goal is inference, not proof. Legal scholars note that a president who removes members can halt the board’s decisions.[21] And after Slaughter, the legal footing for MSPB members’ own job protection looks shaky. I did not find a ruling on that question specifically. Oversimplified or conflated. “The laws were dismantled.” The Pendleton Act and the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act are still on the books. What changed is regulations, job classifications, and enforcement. The legal hook is an old exception for “policy-making” jobs that the Supreme Court has recognized but never defined. The new order reads it much more broadly than earlier presidents did.[22] Whether that stretches the law is being fought in court.[23] “Hitler banned cybernetics.” No. Cybernetics, the science of control and feedback in machines and living things, was denounced as a “reactionary pseudoscience” in the Stalin-era Soviet Union from about 1950 to 1954, and then rehabilitated.[24] The Nazi-era parallel for politicized science is Deutsche Physik, covered below. “Buyouts removed the most talented.” VERA (early retirement), VSIP (cash buyouts) and DRP are different tools. OPM calls the departures 92 percent voluntary; many former employees say they left under pressure.[11] “Most talented” cannot be measured. But GAO found that at OPM itself, 57 percent of those who left had 11 or more years of service,[25] and GAO called IRS cuts “neither targeted nor strategic.”[26] “Banned woke words.” The evidence shows agency-level memos and keyword screens, not one central list. One report says the White House denies issuing a list and says agencies interpret the orders themselves.[27] “Burrowing.” This word is doing three jobs. Classic burrowing means moving political appointees into career jobs, which is legal, has needed OPM approval since 2010, and is small: GAO counted 69 conversions in 2005–2009 and 117 in 2010–2016, across both parties.[28] I found no reporting of a systematic loyalist-conversion program in 2025–26. What is documented are other tools: OPM telling agencies to shift thousands of senior career posts into politically fillable ones,[29] the loyalty question, and Schedule Policy/Career. Minor imprecision. “Forced to prove compliance by find-and-replace” is not confirmed. The order covers current, non-statutory materials, and secondary reports say old archives need not be rewritten. And “almost 10 percent” is fair as a net figure (10.7 percent) but understates gross departures (13.7 percent).[9] Overall verdict. The brief’s big picture holds. By order and rule, rather than by repealing laws, the executive branch has made a larger share of senior career jobs removable at will, shrunk the workforce by about a tenth, and pushed agencies to avoid whole vocabularies. Three details need fixing: the MSPB quorum came back in October 2025; cybernetics was a Soviet target, not a Nazi one; and a loyalist “burrowing” plan is a forecast, not a documented fact. Three governments that tried to control workers and words History does not repeat, but it does rhyme. Three rhymes are worth hearing, with their limits stated up front. First rhyme: the U.S. before and after 1883. Before reform, federal employees could be fired for refusing to give campaign money.[6] The Pendleton Act covered only about 10 percent of the government’s 132,000 jobs. President Grover Cleveland later stretched it to over 40 percent, and by 1980 it covered most federal jobs.[30] The key detail: the act let presidents widen coverage by order.[31] The same lever that built the merit system can also shrink it. That is the parallel that holds. Where it breaks: in 1883 protections started near zero; today they sit in statute and are policed by courts. What it suggests, cautiously: reform took a shock (a murdered president) and then about a century of steady work. Second rhyme: Germany, April 7, 1933. The Nazi regime passed the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.” It let officials be dismissed even where existing law gave no grounds, forced out civil servants of “non-Aryan” descent, and allowed dismissal of anyone whose past politics gave no assurance of unreserved support for the state.[32] Around 15 percent of German professors and lecturers were affected.[33] I name this with care. The mechanism rhymes: a law named “restoration” that put a political-reliability test in front of career jobs. But the nature does not. Nazi Germany used race as a legal category, ended independent courts and elections, and was on a road to genocide. The U.S. still has elections, and courts have already blocked parts of these policies, such as the loyalty question. Nothing here says the two are equal. What the German case does show is that politicized control runs into a practical wall: even then, the “Aryan physics” movement that tried to purge “Jewish” science was ultimately ignored by official circles, because the regime needed real physicists.[34][35] Third rhyme: renaming and banning words. Fascist Italy ran a “linguistic reclamation” campaign against foreign words through the 1930s. A 1940 law reportedly threatened jail for using them in public. Officials pushed voi over the polite lei, and a women’s magazine named Lei was forced to change its name.[36] Most of it collapsed after the regime fell.[36] The Soviet Union, for its part, banned cybernetics in print for about four years before reversing and embracing it in the mid-1950s.[24][37] Historian Slava Gerovitch warns the usual story is overstated; the field was less crushed than legend says.[24] And Johannes Stark, a leader of Deutsche Physik, attacked physicist Werner Heisenberg in an SS newspaper as a “white Jew” for defending Einstein’s work.[34] The pattern across all three: word bans work more as loyalty signals than as technical decisions. They get people to police themselves. And they are cheap to reverse. Soviet science was rehabilitated within about five years. Italians went back to their foreign words. Words return faster than lost experts do. Hungary, Turkey and Russia: three modern cases The first three rhymes are from the last century. Three newer cases show what happens to a civil service, and to words, in countries that are still in living memory. Each comes with a limit on how far the comparison goes. Hungary, 2010 to 2026: the closest civil-service parallel, with a surprising ending. On December 23, 2010, Hungary’s parliament changed its civil service law so that employers could fire civil servants on two months’ notice without giving any reason.[60] The Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, says some 1,600 professionals were dismissed without cause and replaced by party loyalists, with a loss of expertise.[61] Viktor Orbán then governed for 16 years. In April 2026 he lost a landslide election to Péter Magyar’s Tisza party.[62] The ending is the useful part for a future U.S. president. The same analysts note that Orbán’s loyalists were left in the civil administration, the courts, and the prosecutor’s office, and that the new government faces a trap: move too slowly and entrenched networks can block reform; purge too hard and you strip the state of expertise and repeat the method that built the problem.[62] That dispute is already live. Fidesz, now in opposition, says the new government is carrying out a “political purge” of public administration and has launched legal aid for dismissed workers. That claim comes from the party itself and a Fidesz-friendly outlet, and I have not verified it independently.[63] Where it holds: at-will firing plus loyalist hiring tends to leave a legacy that outlasts the leader. Where it breaks: Hungary changed its rules by acts of a parliament with a supermajority, in a country with a much shorter merit-system tradition. The U.S. changes so far come mostly from executive orders that courts can review. Turkey, 2016 to today: dismissal by decree, and “civil death.” After a failed coup on July 15, 2016, Turkey declared a state of emergency that lasted until July 2018 and issued 32 emergency decrees. Official dismissal lists show 134,258 public servants removed, 125,678 of them by decree for alleged links to terrorist groups.[64] A German think tank puts the total at around 130,000.[65] The decrees were not subject to effective parliamentary or court review at the time, and a 2018 law carried the fast-dismissal power into ordinary times for three, later four, more years.[64] A survey of 1,629 dismissed workers found nearly two-thirds could not get a job registered with social security, and acquittals often did not end the blacklisting.[66] Turkey’s Constitutional Court did later cancel one decree provision on dismissals.[67] The government’s stated reason was fighting a coup network, and I did not find an official Turkish government source in my searches, so the sources here lean toward critics and exiles. Turkey also has a long record of renaming: since the early 1900s, and especially from the 1940s, the state replaced the Kurdish, Armenian, Greek, Laz and other names of about 12,000 villages, roughly 35 percent, and about 28,000 places overall, with Turkish ones.[68] A Kurdish politician quoted in that reporting said Kurds kept using the old names among themselves anyway.[68] Where it holds: the lesson that dismissals can be made very hard to reverse through blacklists, long after the original crisis. And a “temporary” power can be extended through ordinary law. Where it breaks: the U.S. has no state of emergency governing hiring, and its courts have stopped some actions, as in the loyalty-question case. Russia: renaming a war. I covered Soviet cybernetics above, but not modern Russia. After the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, officials called it a “special military operation.” The media regulator banned outlets from using the words “war” and “invasion.”[69] On March 4, 2022, parliament passed laws punishing “discrediting” the armed forces, with up to 15 years in prison for spreading what officials call false information.[70] By August 2023, UN experts counted about 7,000 people arrested for allegedly discrediting the military.[71] Then reality pushed back: in March 2024 the Kremlin spokesman said the operation was “de jure” still a special operation but “de facto” a war.[72] Where it holds: a word choice became a loyalty test, and officials themselves could not keep the new vocabulary stable. Where it breaks, importantly: the U.S. “Super Intelligence” order carries no criminal penalties, and I found none reported. It tells agencies to comply “to the maximum extent permitted by law.”[3] I did not research Russia’s separate laws on foreign words, so I make no claim about them. What these three add. First, they confirm the pattern from Italy and the USSR: the personnel changes last longest and the language changes reverse fastest. Second, Hungary’s ending puts the brief’s last question in a sharper light. A successor government inherits a service full of loyalists and a temptation to answer in kind. The analysts who studied Hungary argue the only durable fix is neutral rules that bind every government, including the new one.[62] That is the same problem a future U.S. president will face. Testing the story before trusting it Intelligence analysts use structured techniques because smart people fool themselves. I apply three here and say plainly why each one helps. Key Assumptions Check. What it is: list what you are quietly assuming, then ask which assumption would hurt most if wrong. Why it guards against motivated reasoning: it forces you to look at the beams holding up your own argument. The brief assumes three things. First, that “everything here is about loyalty.” That is too tidy. The Slaughter ruling is argued, by its supporters, as a matter of democratic accountability,[14] and OPM’s director has described the cuts as “right-sizing” the government to its size at the end of Trump’s first term.[38] Second, that a nonpartisan service was achieved in 1883 and can simply be restored. In fact the 1883 law began with about a tenth of the jobs and grew over generations.[30] Third, that a future president can just reverse it all. Some of it, yes. Much of it, no. More on that below. Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH). What it is: instead of collecting evidence for the story you like, you list several explanations and test each piece of evidence against all of them. Why it helps: it shows which evidence actually separates one explanation from another. Here are five hypotheses for what the workforce and language policies are for, tested against seven pieces of evidence. The five hypotheses are: accountability to elected leaders, cost-cutting, loyalty or patronage, culture-war signaling, and improvisation (messy execution without a master plan). For each piece of evidence, here is which hypotheses it fits, which it cuts against, and which it cannot separate. Vought’s “put them in trauma” remark [12]. Fits: loyalty/patronage, culture-war signaling. Cuts against: accountability, improvisation. Cannot separate: cost-cutting. Schedule Policy/Career moved about 8,000 jobs, not 50,000 [7]. Fits: accountability, improvisation. Cuts against: loyalty/patronage (a smaller sweep than the maximum). Cannot separate: cost-cutting, signaling. GAO: IRS cuts “neither targeted nor strategic” [26]. Fits: improvisation. Cuts against: cost-cutting as a careful efficiency drive. Cannot separate: the rest. The loyalty essay question on tens of thousands of job postings [13]. Fits: loyalty/patronage, culture-war signaling. Cuts against: accountability. Cannot separate: the rest. The “Super Intelligence” order leaves statutes unchanged and splits search terms [3][5]. Fits: culture-war signaling, improvisation. Cuts against: cost-cutting. Cannot separate: the rest. OPM’s director says the goal is to shrink to roughly the size at the end of Trump’s first term [38]. Fits: cost-cutting. Cannot separate: the rest. About 20,600 DRP leavers were later backfilled [11]. Fits: improvisation. Cuts against: cost-cutting. Cannot separate: the rest. No single hypothesis wins. Cost-cutting and accountability are the stated aims and fit the headline numbers. Loyalty and signaling fit the hiring question and the language policies best. Improvisation fits how messy the execution looks. The honest reading is a mixture, and intent cannot be proven from outside. That is a useful result: it means each policy should be judged on its own record, not on one theory of the whole. Indicators & Warning. What it is: decide in advance which signs would show a trend getting worse or better. Why it helps: it stops you from reading every new headline as proof of what you already believed. Watch for: a second round of Schedule Policy/Career conversions (more than 50 lawmakers say agencies may be preparing one);[40] court rulings on whether the schedule is lawful;[23] whether the loyalty question comes back in new form; any move against MSPB members now that Slaughter is law; agency attrition and backlog numbers; and the public database of political appointees created by the 2022 PLUM Act, which would show real burrowing if it happens.[41] A tool from software: technical debt and tacit knowledge Here is a lens a typical politics article would not reach for. Software engineers talk about technical debt, a term coined by Ward Cunningham in 1992 for the future cost of a shortcut taken today.[43] They also talk about a team’s bus factor: how many people could be hit by a bus before the project stalls. Add the philosopher Michael Polanyi’s idea of tacit knowledge: we can know more than we can tell.[42] A 20-year employee knows which form the system rejects, which office actually answers the phone, and why a rule exists. None of that is in a manual. Through this lens, the “SI” rename is a classic global find-and-replace, and every programmer knows its trap: it also changes the places where the old name is a legal reference.[5] The deeper point is the buyouts. Letting tens of thousands of experienced people leave at once is a bus-factor event that was chosen on purpose. The cost shows up later, as slower service. Where the borrowed tool strains: a government is not a codebase. Law is not a program that crashes on error, and people can improvise around gaps. Also, a rename is not the same as a bad shortcut; some leaders would call it harmless branding. The lens is best at explaining why people are harder to restore than words. The assumption holding everything up Under every argument in this fight sits one assumption: that government can be run by neutral competence, meaning skilled workers who carry out any elected leader’s agenda without bending it toward a party. Where it came from. Many trace it to Woodrow Wilson’s 1887 essay “The Study of Administration.” Wilson wrote that the field of administration is “removed from the hurry and strife of politics.”[44] That line has been repeated ever since. But scholars note that Wilson is often mistakenly credited with a strict wall between politics and administration, and the label “dichotomy” came later. In the same essay he said politics sets the tasks for administrators but should not be allowed to manipulate their offices. His target was partisan patronage and electoral politics, not elected leadership itself.[44][45] Where it holds. After 1883, workers could no longer be fired for refusing to pay into a party’s campaign fund.[6] That is neutral competence working as intended. Where it fails, in both directions. If “neutral” means no presidential direction, it fails: the Supreme Court itself recognizes an exception for policy-making jobs,[22] and even Washington wanted senior officials who supported the administration’s measures (see below). But the opposite assumption, that total presidential control is costless, fails too. When the people who know how the system works leave, services slow down. The IRS shows it, as we will see. The honest, conditional answer. Neutrality is a dial, not a switch. The real questions are where to set it, who decides, and what review exists if the decision is abused. The disagreement here is mostly about those three things, and a tidy yes or no would hide that. The Founders in conversation with today This section is inference built on real documents. The Founders did not discuss mass federal workforces, so nothing below is invented dialogue. Washington wrote to Timothy Pickering on September 27, 1795, that he would not knowingly put anyone in an “office of consequence” whose political tenets opposed the government’s measures, calling that a kind of “political Suicide.”[46] That supports the accountability case for senior policy roles. Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 77 that the Senate’s consent would be needed to remove officials as well as appoint them. In 1789, when that sentence was used against Madison’s side in Congress, Hamilton reportedly sent word that on “more mature reflection” he agreed with Madison.[47][48] Madison, in the First Congress’s 1789 debate, defended the president’s power to remove department heads at pleasure.[47] That became the “Decision of 1789,” a favorite of today’s defenders of strong presidential control. The Founders disagreed with each other, and sometimes with their earlier selves, which is itself the lesson. The bridge (my inference): Washington and Madison back presidential control over top officials. Nothing in their documents addresses whether a statistician or benefits clerk should be removable for party reasons. They were writing about department heads, in a government of a few clerks. Where the analogy strains: an agrarian republic of a few million people, no telecommunications, no large permanent workforce, and slavery written into its compromises. For a reader outside the U.S.: the Senate is one chamber of Congress, and “advice and consent” is its power to approve a president’s appointees. The strongest objections Objection one: elected leaders must be able to direct the executive. Defenders argue that the personnel system has “swung too far” from accountability,[49] that Schedule Policy/Career does not by itself politicize the service,[50] and that Slaughter restores accountability to voters.[51] They have a real point. Presidents are elected to set policy, and Washington and Madison would have agreed. The reply: accountability is about direction, but the evidence here also includes a stated wish to cause “trauma,” a loyalty question that a judge found likely unconstitutional, and measured service declines. Those go beyond direction. Objection two: both parties burrow. True. Trump’s own 2016 transition manager promised to root out Obama-era appointees who had converted to career jobs, and about three dozen Trump appointees later converted themselves.[52] That is why a symmetrical rule, like OPM pre-approval and a public appointee database, is better than a one-sided complaint. What the next president inherits The brief asks why this makes it harder for a future president who wants a nonpartisan workforce. There are four reasons, some easy to reverse and some not. Easy to reverse (by order): the Schedule Policy/Career list and the “Super Intelligence” wording both came from executive action, so a successor can undo them quickly. But the tool cuts both ways: a successor could use at-will status to reshuffle those same 8,000 senior jobs. That is possible but not yet evidenced, and it would make each presidency a purge. Hard to reverse (by time): experience cannot be ordered back. OPM’s own director acknowledged the shortage of early-career hires,[39] and the stated target of one hire for every four departures slows any rebuild.[39] Hard to reverse (by law): Slaughter hands a future president the same removal power over independent boards. A president who wants independent referees will need Congress to build them differently. Hard to reverse (by trust): applicants and scientists who learned to avoid certain words, or to answer a loyalty question, may not return quickly. Ripple effects Of the issue itself. Slower services, well-documented. At the IRS, individual paper returns took about 30 working days against a 13-day target in the 2026 season. Business quarterly returns took 72 days against 32. Average call waits more than doubled, and unstaffed or temporarily closed taxpayer centers rose from 18 to 32.[53] The Social Security Administration lost at least 7,000 employees in 2025, and GAO warned of further skills gaps and delays.[54] FEMA officials said the cuts caused a loss of leadership and institutional knowledge.[55] Self-censorship in science, well-documented. Researchers describe speaking “in code” to avoid flagged words.[16] This likely biases which questions get studied. A thinner talent pipeline, possible but not yet evidenced. Loyalty screens and at-will status may deter some strong candidates. I found no hard applicant data yet. Of the proposed fixes. Rehiring is slow and imperfect, likely. IRS watchdogs noted that many who left were experienced workers whose knowledge “cannot easily be replaced.”[53] Backfilling can restore headcount faster than skill. Pendulum politics, possible. If each president re-sorts senior jobs, agencies may spend more time on turnover than on service. What is already being done Courts. On September 11, 2026, Judge George O’Toole ordered the loyalty question removed from job postings. He denied a broader order covering answers already submitted.[56] Suits against Schedule Policy/Career wait on how the June order is applied.[23] Watchdogs. GAO reports on the IRS, FEMA, SEC and OPM have put hard numbers on the losses, which gives Congress a record to act on.[26][55] Congress. The Congressional Research Service has outlined options, including writing the 2024 protections or their reversal into statute.[57] More than 50 members demanded documentation of the June conversions.[40] No law has passed that I found. Civil society. The Partnership for Public Service has held public briefings to explain the new rules to employees,[58] and a coalition led by Democracy Forward filed detailed comments opposing the rule.[59] MSPB. The Senate confirmed a member in October 2025, restoring the quorum, so worker appeals can again be decided.[20] One thing you can do Look up the “merit system principles” in the U.S. Code (5 U.S.C. § 2301). They say hiring and firing should rest on ability and fair treatment, not politics. Then ask your own representative, whatever their party, whether they would write those principles and an independent appeals board into permanent law.[57] And if a government service has gotten slower for you, tell your representative’s casework office. That is how the scattered numbers become a pattern. A closing thought Garfield said the civil service could never rest on a satisfactory footing until it was governed by law.[6] It took a gunshot to make Congress listen. The hopeful news is that the lesson is already written down: rules last longer than moods, and expertise is easier to keep than to rebuild. Two jobs are easy to confuse here. One is deciding what the government should do, which belongs to voters and their elected leaders. The other is doing it well, which depends on people who know how. A healthy country protects both. The 3-minute summary In 2026 the U.S. executive branch ordered agencies to say “Super Intelligence” instead of “artificial intelligence,” a change that alters words but not laws. That order is the latest in a series that began in 2025: about 317,000 people left federal service, a net drop of roughly 10.7 percent. A new job category, Schedule Policy/Career, made about 8,000 senior career jobs removable at will. A loyalty-style hiring question was blocked in court. And in June 2026 the Supreme Court said presidents can remove the heads of independent agencies at will. The brief’s core picture is right. But some details need fixing: the MSPB quorum was restored in October 2025, cybernetics was a Stalin-era Soviet target rather than a Nazi one, and a loyalist “burrowing” plan is a forecast, not a documented fact. History offers cautions rather than certainties: reform in 1883 took a shock and a century; Nazi Germany’s 1933 law shows how “restoration” can mask political tests, though the U.S. differs in kind; and word bans in Italy and the USSR were quickly reversed while lost expertise was not. The best-supported reading is a mix of stated aims (accountability, cost) and visible side effects (loyalty screens, language policing, slower service). A future president can undo orders quickly, but cannot quickly rebuild experience. Something you can do today Read 5 U.S.C. § 2301, then email or call one elected representative and ask whether they support putting merit-system principles and an independent appeals board into permanent law. Something you can share Words come back faster than experts do. A government can undo a rename in a day. Rebuilding the people who knew how things work takes years. #CivilService Notes A bracketed number that appears more than once in the text points back to the same note. All web pages were accessed October 21, 2026. “Trump Super Intelligence Order Renames AI, but Not the Technology,” remio.ai, October 2026 (secondary report citing an email obtained by the Associated Press; I did not locate the AP original), https://www.remio.ai/post/trump-super-intelligence-order-renames-ai-but-not-the-technology. “Do You Need to Rename AI to Super Intelligence in Contracts?,” mihata.jp (Japan-based business column), 2026, https://mihata.jp/en/column/si-rename-japan-business-docs. “AI by any other name? White House directs federal agencies to enter the era of ‘super intelligence,’” IAPP, October 2026, https://iapp.org/news/a/ai-by-any-other-name-white-house-directs-federal-agencies-to-enter-the-era-of-super-intelligence. I could not open the White House order itself; a secondary site lists its address as https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/09/inaugurating-the-era-of-super-intelligence/, unverified by me. “Trump’s Super Intelligence Order Renames AI, but It Cannot Rewrite the Technology,” remio.ai, 2026, https://www.remio.ai/post/trumps-super-intelligence-order-renames-ai-but-it-cannot-rewrite-the-technology (the speech remark); the statement that archived documents need not be rewritten is in note 1’s source. Mihata.jp, “Trap 1: running a global find-and-replace,” same URL as note 2. Becky Little, “How a Presidential Assassination Led to the End of the Spoils System,” History.com, February 10, 2025, https://www.history.com/news/garfield-assassination-spoils-system-reforms-federal-employees; and NPR Throughline, “The birth of the modern federal civil service,” May 26, 2025, https://www.wunc.org/2025-05-26/throughline-the-birth-of-the-modern-federal-civil-service. The July 2, 1881 date comes from the general historical record, not from these two pages. Federal News Network, “Trump moves about 8,000 federal positions to Schedule Policy/Career,” June 2026, https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2026/06/trump-moves-about-8000-federal-positions-to-schedule-policy-career/. Federal News Network, “Trump administration advances plan to strip job protections from career federal employees,” February 2026, https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2026/02/trump-administration-advances-plan-to-strip-job-protections-from-career-federal-employees/. Federal News Network, “317,000 feds have left the government this year, surpassing OPM’s goal,” November 2025, https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2025/11/317000-feds-have-left-the-government-this-year-surpassing-opms-goal/; and “DOGE’s war on the federal workforce, by the numbers,” federalworkerrights.com, December 18, 2025, https://federalworkerrights.com/2025/12/18/doges-war-on-the-federal-workforce-by-the-numbers/. “GAO Report Offers Accounting of Workforce Losses and Reasons for Leaving,” FedWeek, 2026, https://www.fedweek.com/issue-briefs/gao-report-offers-accounting-of-workforce-losses-and-reasons-for-leaving/. “OPM Reports 317,000 Fed Departures in 2025,” FEDmanager, https://www.fedmanager.com/news/opm-reports-317000-fed-departures-in-2025-dod-largest-drop-by-number; and “OPM says 92% of fed departures this year were voluntary. Those who left disagree,” Government Executive, December 2025, https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2025/12/opm-says-92-fed-departures-year-were-voluntary-those-who-left-disagree/410076/ (which also links a separate analysis, which I did not open, reporting about 20,600 DRP leavers were backfilled). “‘Put them in trauma’: Inside a key MAGA leader’s plans for a new Trump agenda,” ProPublica, October 2024, https://www.propublica.org/article/video-donald-trump-russ-vought-center-renewing-america-maga. The speech was recorded in 2023, before Vought returned to the White House budget office. “Judge bars Trump administration’s ‘loyalty’ question on federal job applications,” Federal News Network, September 14, 2026, https://federalnewsnetwork.com/litigation/2026/09/judge-bars-trump-administrations-loyalty-question-on-federal-job-applications/; and Maryland Matters, September 15, 2026, https://marylandmatters.org/2026/09/15/judge-bars-trump-administrations-loyalty-question-on-federal-job-applications/. Posting counts differ: plaintiffs’ counsel cited more than 70,000; DailyFED counted about 33,000 as of May 2026, https://dailyfed.com/2026/05/applying-for-a-federal-job-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-loyalty-question/. “Supreme Court Redefines Presidential Removal Authority Over Independent Agencies,” Dentons, July 2026, https://www.dentons.com/en/insights/alerts/2026/july/7/trump-v-slaughter; and Paul, Weiss, https://www.paulweiss.com/insights/client-memos/supreme-court-overrules-humphrey-s-executor-but-preserves-the-fed-s-independence. “Legal challenges to executive orders targeting federal employees deemed ‘DEI’ workers,” Federal News Network, April 2025, https://federalnewsnetwork.com/commentary/2025/04/legal-challenges-to-executive-orders-targeting-federal-employees-deemed-dei-workers/; OPM, “Updated Guidance Regarding Executive Order 14168,” https://www.opm.gov/chcoc/latest-memos/updated-guidance-regarding-executive-order-14168-defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government.pdf; Executive Order 14151, https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-01953.pdf. “To keep climate science alive, researchers are speaking in code,” Grist, 2026, https://grist.org/language/climate-federal-research-grants-national-science-foundation/. “Ctrl+F: Federal agencies used keyword searches to nix grants en masse, court records show,” Higher Ed Dive, 2026, https://www.highereddive.com/news/ctrlf-federal-agencies-used-keyword-searches-to-nix-grants-en-masse-cour/826065/. “What MSPB can and can’t do without a quorum,” Federal News Network, May 2025, https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce-rightsgovernance/2025/05/what-mspb-can-and-cant-do-without-a-quorum/. Bednar, “Commission Quorums,” 78 Stanford Law Review 1125 (June 2026), https://review.law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2026/06/Bednar-78-Stan.-L.-Rev.-1125.pdf. MSPB, “Frequently Asked Questions about the Lack of Quorum Period and Restoration of the Full Board,” updated August 28, 2026, https://www.mspb.gov/FAQs%20Absence%20of%20Board%20Quorum%20and%20Board%20Status%208-28-28.pdf; and MSPB board members page, https://www.mspb.gov/about/members.htm. “The Merit Systems Protection Board’s Independence Is Dead,” Lawfare, https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-merit-systems-protection-board-s-independence-is-dead. Congressional Research Service, “Schedule Policy/Career: 2026 Final Rule, Legal Challenges, and Issues for Lawmakers,” LSB11412, https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB11412. “Inside the Implementation of Schedule Policy/Career,” Lawfare, June 2026, https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/inside-the-implementation-of-schedule-policy-career. Review of Slava Gerovitch, From Newspeak to Cyberspeak, American Historical Review, https://web.mit.edu/slava/homepage/reviews/review-ahr.htm; and “Cybernetics in the Soviet Union,” Wikipedia (secondary), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Union. GAO, “Recent Federal Workforce Changes at OPM,” GAO-26-108916, July 2026, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-108916. “IRS Job Cuts Put Critical Operations at Risk, GAO Says,” FedWeek, March 17, 2026, https://www.fedweek.com/fedweek/irs-job-cuts-put-critical-operations-at-risk-gao-says/; GAO-26-108116, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-26-108116.pdf. “Full list of words banned by Trump, including ‘Climate Change,’” Ground Report, 2026, https://www.groundreport.in/latest/full-list-of-words-banned-by-trump-including-climate-change-8839026/ (an aggregator and a weak source; treat the White House denial as reported, not confirmed). “Agencies Cautioned against Allowing ‘Burrowing In’ of Political Appointees,” FedWeek, summarizing GAO reviews, https://www.fedweek.com/fedweek/agencies-cautioned-against-allowing-burrowing-in-of-political-appointees/. “Trump to convert some top career roles to political appointments and evaluate execs on adherence to president’s agenda,” Government Executive, February 2025, https://www.govexec.com/management/2025/02/trump-convert-governments-top-career-roles-political-appointments-and-evaluate-execs-adherence-presidents-agenda/403277/. Little, History.com (see note 6), for the 10 percent of 132,000 jobs, Cleveland’s expansion, and 1980 coverage. “Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act,” Wikipedia (secondary), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendleton_Civil_Service_Reform_Act. “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, April 7, 1933,” Yad Vashem translation, https://yadvashem.org/docs/restoration-of-professional-civil-service; German History in Documents and Images, https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/nazi-germany-1933-1945/law-for-the-restoration-of-the-professional-civil-service-april-7-1933.pdf. Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, “How research and funding were ‘Aryanised,’” https://www.dfg.de/en/about-us/about-the-dfg/history/national-socialist-era/aryanisation. “How 2 Pro-Nazi Nobelists Attacked Einstein’s ‘Jewish Science’” (book excerpt), Scientific American, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-2-pro-nazi-nobelists-attacked-einstein-s-jewish-science-excerpt1/; and “Johannes Stark,” Physics Today, https://physicstoday.aip.org/news/johannes-stark. MIT OpenCourseWare 8.225, lecture 13, “Physics under Hitler,” https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sts-042-einstein-oppenheimer-feynman-physics-in-the-20th-century-fall-2020/mitsts_042j_f20_lec13.pdf. “How Fascism Changed The Italian Language,” Babbel Magazine, https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/italian-language-and-fascism; Learnamo, https://learnamo.com/?p=67196; Quartz, https://qz.com/the-italian-government-wants-to-ban-foreign-words-just-1850294377. Accounts of the exact dates (1923, 1929, 1940) differ across these sources. “Soviet Cybernetics: An Introduction,” Cosmonaut, October 2022, https://cosmonautmag.com/2022/10/soviet-cybernetics-an-introduction/. “Competing numbers emerge on federal workforce reductions,” Federal News Network, August 2025, https://federalnewsnetwork.com/federal-report/2025/08/competing-numbers-emerge-on-federal-workforce-reductions/. Federal News Network, November 2025 (see note 9), for the early-career hiring remark and the four-departures-per-hire goal. “More than 50 Dem lawmakers demand more Schedule F transparency,” Government Executive, July 2026, https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2026/07/more-50-dem-lawmakers-demand-more-schedule-f-transparency/414800/. “OPM Denied 20% of Agency Requests to Let Politicals Convert Into Career Roles,” Government Executive, 2023, https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2023/04/one-four-cases-agencies-failed-seek-permission-letting-political-appointees-burrow/385780/. Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), 4. Cited from memory; not live-verified. Ward Cunningham, “The WyCash Portfolio Management System,” OOPSLA ’92 experience report. Cited from memory; not live-verified. Woodrow Wilson, “The Study of Administration,” Political Science Quarterly 2 (1887), quoted via https://www.proquest.com/docview/197180688. Patrick Overeem, The Politics-Administration Dichotomy: A Reconstruction, Leiden University, https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/access/item:2937315/view. George Washington to Timothy Pickering, September 27, 1795, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-18-02-0482. “‘Upon More Mature Reflection’: Hamilton’s About-Face on Removal in 1789,” The Constitutionalist, June 8, 2026, https://theconstitutionalist.org/2026/06/08/upon-more-mature-reflection-hamiltons-about-face-on-removal-in-1789/. Seth Barrett Tillman, “The Puzzle of Hamilton’s Federalist No. 77,” Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy (2010), https://journals.law.harvard.edu/jlpp/wp-content/uploads/sites/90/2010/01/tillman.pdf. Simon Hankinson, “Balancing Accountability With Civil Servant Protections in the Federal Bureaucracy,” Daily Signal, January 12, 2024, https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/01/12/bureaucracy-reform-presidential-power-struggle-democracy-boost/. “Critics argue new federal workforce rules increase the risk of politicization, not accountability,” Government Executive, April 2026 (discussing Ronald Sanders’s March 5, 2026 op-ed), https://www.govexec.com/management/2026/04/critics-argue-new-federal-workforce-rules-increase-risk-politicization-not-accountability/412558/. Washington Legal Foundation, “Trump v. Slaughter,” https://www.wlf.org/case/trump-v-slaughter/. “Thirty-Five Trump Appointees Have Converted to Career Federal Jobs Over the Last Year,” Government Executive, 2021, https://www.govexec.com/oversight/2021/03/thirty-five-trump-appointees-have-converted-career-federal-jobs-over-last-year/173048/. “GAO Sees Delays, Lower Customer Service after IRS Cutbacks,” FedWeek, August 17, 2026, https://www.fedweek.com/federal-managers-daily-report/gao-sees-delays-lower-customer-service-after-irs-cutbacks/. “Without telework, GAO warns of further SSA staffing losses,” Federal News Network, February 3, 2026, https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2026/02/without-telework-gao-warns-of-further-ssa-staffing-losses/. GAO, “FEMA Workforce: Staff Reductions and Lack of Planning May Impact Mission Readiness,” GAO-26-108427, August 2026, https://www.gao.gov/assets/890/888177.pdf. Federal News Network, September 14, 2026 (see note 13). “Report Lays Out Current, Potential Future Legal Challenges to Schedule P/C,” FedWeek, https://www.fedweek.com/issue-briefs/report-lays-out-current-potential-future-legal-challenges-to-schedule-p-c/; and CRS (see note 22). Partnership for Public Service, “Civil service advocates break down the new federal employment category, Schedule Policy/Career,” https://ourpublicservice.org/know-the-facts/blog/civil-service-advocates-break-down-the-new-federal-employment-category-schedule-policy-career. Democracy Forward coalition, comment on OPM rule, June 2025, https://democracyforward.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Schedule-PC-Coalition-Comment-Final.pdf. U.S. Department of State, “2010 Human Rights Report: Hungary,” https://2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2010/eur/154428.htm. “The Dangers of Project 2025: Global Lessons in Authoritarianism,” Center for American Progress (progressive think tank), 2026, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-dangers-of-project-2025-global-lessons-in-authoritarianism/. Robert Benson, Dan Herman, and Gabriel de Kergolay, “Hungary After Orbán: The Promises and Risks of Democratic Renewal,” Center for American Progress, August 26, 2026, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/hungary-after-orban-the-promises-and-risks-of-democratic-renewal/. “FIDESZ Launches Legal Aid Program for Public Administration Workers Dismissed in ‘Political Purge,’” Hungary Today, 2026, https://hungarytoday.hu/fidesz-launches-legal-aid-program-for-public-administration-workers-dismissed-in-political-purge/ (reports the party’s own claims). “Turkey’s post-coup crackdown, 10 years on: The purge of public servants,” Stockholm Center for Freedom (rights group run by Turkish exiles), 2026, https://stockholmcf.org/turkeys-post-coup-crackdown-10-years-on-the-purge-of-public-servants/; and “…A decade’s legacy,” https://stockholmcf.org/turkeys-post-coup-crackdown-10-years-on-a-decades-legacy/. “The failed coup and Turkey’s path towards autocracy,” Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (Berlin), https://www.swp-berlin.org/en/publication/the-failed-coup-and-turkeys-path-towards-autocracy. “Turkey’s post-coup purge created a decade of ‘civil death,’ rights group says,” Stockholm Center for Freedom, 2026, https://stockholmcf.org/turkeys-post-coup-purge-created-a-decade-of-civil-death-rights-group-says/. “Top court finds civil servant dismissals by decree after coup attempt unconstitutional,” Turkish Minute, February 3, 2022, https://www.turkishminute.com/2022/02/03/p-court-finds-civil-servant-dismissals-by-decree-after-coup-attempt-unconstitutional/. “Names of 12,211 Villages Were Changed in Turkey,” Bianet, https://www.bianet.org/haber/names-of-12-211-villages-were-changed-in-turkey-114491; and “Laz Activist Demands Return of Location Names,” Bianet, https://bianet.org/haber/laz-activist-demands-return-of-location-names-151494. European Union Agency for Asylum, “State control over information and media” (Russia country focus), citing the International Press Institute on the 2022 ban on “war” and “invasion,” https://www.euaa.europa.eu/russian-federation-country-focus/12-state-control-over-information-and-media. “Russia threatens jail time for spread of ‘fake’ news over Ukraine war,” Global News, March 2022, https://globalnews.ca/news/8658696/russia-threatens-jail-time-fake-news-ukraine-war. “Russian Court decisions on laws discrediting armed forces a ‘new low’ in clampdown on expression: UN experts,” OHCHR, August 28, 2023, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/08/russian-court-decisions-laws-discrediting-armed-forces-new-low-clampdown. “Russia is in a state of war – Kremlin,” Weekend Argus, March 23, 2024, via PressReader, https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/weekend-argus-saturday-edition/20240323/281908778138465 (a weaker secondary source for the Peskov remark). About this analysis Original source analyzed: none. This piece fact-checks the claims inside the commissioning brief (the topic text below), which has no title, publication date, or URL. Date written: October 21, 2026. AI model and version: Claude Sonnet 5.5, made by Anthropic. Training cutoff, and what was verified how: the model’s reliable knowledge ends in June 2026. Every 2025–2026 fact, figure, date, and quotation in this piece was checked through live web search on October 21, 2026, and is tied to a numbered note. Drawn from training knowledge and not live-verified: the Polanyi and Cunningham citations (notes 42–43), the July 2, 1881 date of Garfield’s shooting, and general background such as the meaning of “GS-15.” I could not open the White House text of the September 29 order and relied on secondary summaries (note 3). Where sources conflict (posting counts, the dates of Italy’s word laws), the notes say so. Sources & Further Reading Civil service law and history Becky Little, “How a Presidential Assassination Led to the End of the Spoils System,” History.com — https://www.history.com/news/garfield-assassination-spoils-system-reforms-federal-employees NPR Throughline, “The birth of the modern federal civil service” — https://www.wunc.org/2025-05-26/throughline-the-birth-of-the-modern-federal-civil-service Congressional Research Service, “Schedule Policy/Career: 2026 Final Rule, Legal Challenges, and Issues for Lawmakers” — https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB11412 Lawfare, “Inside the Implementation of Schedule Policy/Career” — https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/inside-the-implementation-of-schedule-policy-career Federal News Network, “Trump moves about 8,000 federal positions to Schedule Policy/Career” — https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2026/06/trump-moves-about-8000-federal-positions-to-schedule-policy-career/ Woodrow Wilson, “The Study of Administration” (1887), via ProQuest summary — https://www.proquest.com/docview/197180688 Founders Online, Washington to Pickering, 1795 — https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-18-02-0482 Courts, MSPB and independence MSPB, quorum FAQ (updated August 28, 2026) — https://www.mspb.gov/FAQs%20Absence%20of%20Board%20Quorum%20and%20Board%20Status%208-28-28.pdf Dentons, analysis of Trump v. Slaughter — https://www.dentons.com/en/insights/alerts/2026/july/7/trump-v-slaughter Washington Legal Foundation, Trump v. Slaughter (supportive view) — https://www.wlf.org/case/trump-v-slaughter/ Lawfare, “The Merit Systems Protection Board’s Independence Is Dead” — https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-merit-systems-protection-board-s-independence-is-dead Federal News Network, “Judge bars Trump administration’s ‘loyalty’ question” — https://federalnewsnetwork.com/litigation/2026/09/judge-bars-trump-administrations-loyalty-question-on-federal-job-applications/ Workforce and services Federal News Network, “317,000 feds have left the government this year” — https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2025/11/317000-feds-have-left-the-government-this-year-surpassing-opms-goal/ Government Executive, “OPM says 92% of fed departures this year were voluntary. Those who left disagree” — https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2025/12/opm-says-92-fed-departures-year-were-voluntary-those-who-left-disagree/410076/ GAO-26-108116 (IRS) — https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-26-108116.pdf GAO-26-108427 (FEMA) — https://www.gao.gov/assets/890/888177.pdf GAO-26-108916 (OPM) — https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-108916 Federal News Network, SSA and GAO — https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2026/02/without-telework-gao-warns-of-further-ssa-staffing-losses/ Government Executive, “Critics argue new federal workforce rules increase the risk of politicization” — https://www.govexec.com/management/2026/04/critics-argue-new-federal-workforce-rules-increase-risk-politicization-not-accountability/412558/ Simon Hankinson (Heritage Foundation), Daily Signal — https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/01/12/bureaucracy-reform-presidential-power-struggle-democracy-boost/ Words, science and “Super Intelligence” IAPP, “AI by any other name?” — https://iapp.org/news/a/ai-by-any-other-name-white-house-directs-federal-agencies-to-enter-the-era-of-super-intelligence Mihata.jp (Japan), “Do You Need to Rename AI to Super Intelligence in Contracts?” — https://mihata.jp/en/column/si-rename-japan-business-docs Grist, “To keep climate science alive, researchers are speaking in code” — https://grist.org/language/climate-federal-research-grants-national-science-foundation/ Higher Ed Dive, “Ctrl+F” — https://www.highereddive.com/news/ctrlf-federal-agencies-used-keyword-searches-to-nix-grants-en-masse-cour/826065/ ProPublica, “‘Put them in trauma’” — https://www.propublica.org/article/video-donald-trump-russ-vought-center-renewing-america-maga International history German History in Documents and Images, 1933 civil service law — https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/nazi-germany-1933-1945/law-for-the-restoration-of-the-professional-civil-service-april-7-1933.pdf Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Germany), “How research and funding were ‘Aryanised’” — https://www.dfg.de/en/about-us/about-the-dfg/history/national-socialist-era/aryanisation Scientific American, excerpt on Deutsche Physik — https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-2-pro-nazi-nobelists-attacked-einstein-s-jewish-science-excerpt1/ Slava Gerovitch, review of From Newspeak to Cyberspeak — https://web.mit.edu/slava/homepage/reviews/review-ahr.htm Babbel Magazine, “How Fascism Changed The Italian Language” — https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/italian-language-and-fascism Luca Piacentini (University of Pavia, Italy), on Italy’s commission for the “italianità” of the language — https://edizionicafoscari.it/media/pdf/books/978-88-6969-111-9/978-88-6969-111-9-ch-15.pdf Center for American Progress, “Hungary After Orbán” (progressive view) — https://www.americanprogress.org/article/hungary-after-orban-the-promises-and-risks-of-democratic-renewal/ Hungary Today, Fidesz legal-aid program (Fidesz-friendly view) — https://hungarytoday.hu/fidesz-launches-legal-aid-program-for-public-administration-workers-dismissed-in-political-purge/ Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (Germany), “The failed coup and Turkey’s path towards autocracy” — https://www.swp-berlin.org/en/publication/the-failed-coup-and-turkeys-path-towards-autocracy Stockholm Center for Freedom, “The purge of public servants” — https://stockholmcf.org/turkeys-post-coup-crackdown-10-years-on-the-purge-of-public-servants/ Bianet (Turkey), “Names of 12,211 Villages Were Changed in Turkey” — https://www.bianet.org/haber/names-of-12-211-villages-were-changed-in-turkey-114491 UN OHCHR, Russian “discrediting” laws — https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/08/russian-court-decisions-laws-discrediting-armed-forces-new-low-clampdown