NEW: The Trump admin has been working behind the scenes to set up staffers w/ permanent career positions across the federal bureaucracy, raising fears among Dems that these holdovers will wreak havoc once Biden gets sworn into office. by @rbravender ($) https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-burrowing-administration-biden-government-employees-agencies-deep-state-2020-11

It's a practice commonly known in DC as "burrowing," where political appointees score permanent gigs that come with good job benefits & protections that make them harder to fire. This happens every 4 or 8 years whenever there's a change in power from one White House to the next.

For Trump, the burrowing process got started even before he lost his reelection campaign earlier this month, according to federal employment data exclusive obtained by @Politicsinsider

In the first quarter and second quarter of 2020, the documents show Trump's administration installed at least 13 former political appointees into permanent jobs, including at the Justice, Interior, and Veterans Affairs departments.

Democrats and government watchdogs say they're especially worried about the burrowing Trump appointees and the expectation the numbers will grow as the lame duck president recognizes he's going to be out of a job come January.

They're warning that Trump loyalists could be getting jobs that ought to go to more qualified candidates, & that Biden's team might be saddled with a Trump version of the very "deep state" concept that the current president has been railing about since his own 2016 campaign.

"Federal service needs to be driven by merit and competence, not loyalty tests," said Rep. Gerry Connolly, chair of a gov oversight subcommittee. "The incoming Biden administration & Congress must roll back the Trump administration's attempts to create a new patronage system."

In April, Jordan Von Bokern got a civil service job as a trial attorney in DOJ's civil division. He's a former law clerk to Amy Coney Barrett who had been working as a political appointee in DOJ's legal policy shop under AG Barr. His salary rose from $94K per year to $109K.

Barr also appointed Tracy Short, a former political appointee who was senior advisor to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, to be chief immigration judge at the Executive Office for Immigration Review.

That move enraged critics of the administration who said the move would politicize the immigration court. Short's move came with about a $10,000 annual pay bump to an annual salary of more than $185,000.

Lawrence Connell worked as a political appointee on Trump's transition team for VA & later served as CoS for the Veterans Health Administration. He got a new civil service job in May as exec dir of a veterans healthcare facility in RI & w/ it a $10K raise to make $190K/year

The administration made other conversions from political to permanent government jobs this year at Interior, the SEC, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the International Trade Commission, and the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, the records show.

Conner Swanson, an Interior spox, told Insider that the Executive Resources Board — a team that reviews personnel moves — "looks at all candidates for positions based on their merits and qualifications to execute Interior's mission on behalf of the American people."

Press offices at DOJ and the VA did not respond to requests for comment about the job changes for Von Bokern, Short, or Connell.

Trump is by no means the first president to allow burrowing on his watch. It's always a hot topic in the waning days of an administration, and Obama and Bush took plenty of heat from their critics when their political appointees outlasted them.

Obama's OPM approved at least 78 requests to convert political aides to career positions, according to a report issued in 2017 by the Government Accountability Office. And the GAO in 2010 identified at least 139 conversions from 2005 until 2009 during the Bush administration.

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