Even with the midterm elections approaching, New Republic writer Jason Linkins argues that it is not too early for the next Democratic White House to begin planning how to rid federal agencies of Trump-appointed loyalists. In a recent column for The New Republic, Linkins contends that the scale of political staffing across the government means the task will outlast a single transition cycle.

Linkins builds on a recent New York Times report, covered by Alternet, which described a Department of Justice Civil Rights Division so hollowed out by politicization that it was forced to hire a string of ethically challenged appointees. They include, according to the report, "a former prosecutor forced off a high-profile murder case for peeking at the defense team's strategy documents," a "onetime gambling executive" who promoted "conspiracy theories about the Las Vegas massacre in 2017," and a "Florida activist" who was jailed for several weeks for "hacking a local election system."

The problems extend beyond questionable résumés, Linkins noted, pointing to lapses such as lawyers who could not spell the word "north."

"The long and the short of it is that the agency, once stocked with skilled professionals, is now chock-full of people who ordinarily wouldn't pass the smell test for public service," Linkins wrote. "Somewhere, a pool is missing its cess, and they might want to check whether it ended up at the DOJ."

In his view, the situation will not resolve itself. President Donald Trump entered his second term determined to hire officials more loyal to himself than to the Constitution, Linkins argued, and it is wishful thinking to expect the appointees who have come to Washington to leave once a Democratic administration takes control.

"I worry that some of the true believers aren't just here visiting; they intend to stay," he wrote.

As an example, Linkins pointed to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom he accused of going to great lengths to staff the agency "with all manner of cranks and quacks." At last week's MAHA Summit in Washington, D.C., Kennedy "proclaimed the changes he's wrought to HHS are permanent, and praised his allies in the movement for helping to make them happen," as Mother Jones reported.

"Even if I got hit by a truck tonight, HHS will never go back to what it was before," Kennedy declared at the summit.

Linkins likewise asserted that the Department of Homeland Security has deteriorated into "a hive of outlandish herrenvolk propaganda, pumping neo-Nazi memes into the social media bloodstream — the better to recruit the sort of person who might want to inflict terror on the streets of American cities." His characterization draws on reporting by SPLC's Hatewatch and The Atlantic.

"For a future Democratic president, the challenge of righting the ship of state will not simply be a matter of reviving the federal workforce and bringing competent professionals back to the perches they once occupied," Linkins warned. "It will a matter of fumigation."

He pointed to a term coined by Yale Law professor Dina Francesca Haynes — "lustration," defined as "the process of vetting and removing from public service those who engage in or support extremism or seek to undermine democracy" — and called it a "necessary bridge back to a functioning democracy."

"The right way to think about the Trump administration and its wholesale operations across the federal government is to accept the fact that it is essentially a criminal syndicate, dedicated to self-enrichment and political corruption," Linkins wrote. "The next Democratic administration should have accountability on its mind, and a commitment to rooting out the Trumpian rot that's infected the civic architecture of this great nation."

Still, Linkins urged readers to look on the bright side of removing such appointees: "It might be that the most useful thing the Trump administration has accomplished in its odious lifetime is to provide the playbook to right its wrongs and dismantle Trumpism permanently."