John Locher/AP Photo
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks on November 19, 2022, in Las Vegas.
It was The Apprentice that first brought Donald Trump to the attention of a broader public than the benighted readers of the New York Post. And it was his signature line on that series—“You’re fired!”—that established his image as a no-nonsense businessman, though it would be hard to find another businessman who peddled as much nonsense as Trump.
Even as the media is now filled with stories of Trump’s weakening hold over the Republican Party, though, his signature line appears to have become a battle cry for the entire GOP. They may not be able to legislate, but their desire to fire knows no bounds.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is clearly seeking to supplant Trump as the party’s leader, and one way he’s doing that is to fire public officials when he believes it will help his rise. Last summer, he fired Hillsborough County (i.e., Tampa) State Attorney Andrew Warren, after Warren said he wouldn’t enforce the state’s ban on abortions. Whether DeSantis had the legal right to fire Warren is now before the courts, since Warren was elected to his position by Hillsborough County voters and, like every Florida county’s DA, wasn’t a gubernatorial appointee but a local elected official. Undaunted, DeSantis has gone on to appoint local school board members to what are normally elected positions and then have them fire district superintendents who’ve run afoul of the governor’s limited vision of pedagogy.
Yesterday, DeSantis was joined in his firing frenzy by the newly installed Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. The House rules they adopted yesterday included an oddity known as the Holman Rule, which empowers Congress to add to appropriations bills amendments to fire, demote, reassign, or cut the pay of individual federal employees. The rule first surfaced in the late 19th century as part of the battle between advocates of party patronage and advocates of civil service within the federal government. It then was rescinded for the better part of a century until the MAGA Republicans resurrected it in 2017. It was not renewed during the past four years of Democratic control of the House, but it made a comeback yesterday in Matt Gaetz’s House, where Republicans now may single out the commie, satanic pederasts of the Biden administration not just for slander but for firing as well.
How Congress’s sudden power to fire executive branch officials comports with the Constitution’s separation of powers, I have no idea.
As Adam Serwer of The Atlantic (and a former Prospect writing fellow) famously noted in writing of such Trump administration policies as taking small children away from their parents at the border, “the cruelty is the point.” It was the frisson of seeing cruelty in action that first drew future MAGA-oids to Trump during his firing flings on The Apprentice. Today, in their desire to stick it to the libs—which is both a strategy and an obsession—the Republicans have concluded that their political appeal to their base depends on their enabling their audience to experience schadenfreude—excitement and gratification at the harm inflicted on their enemies. DeSantis understands that’s the core of his appeal, and House Republicans, with their upcoming “oversight” and now their Holman Rule, see it as the way to keep their base fervid, loyal, and entertained.
