Ahead of the 2024 election, the Biden-Harris administration has ramped up "Schedule A" hiring of hundreds of people who would remain in office past the end of Joe Biden’s White House term.

According to the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF), this group of new hires consists primarily of lawyers and judges, and the appointments were to the Environmental and Natural Resources (ENRD) and Antitrust and Immigration Review divisions of the Department of Justice since Biden took office. 

Federal regulations state that Schedule A hiring is set aside for hiring either those with "severe physical disabilities, psychiatric disabilities, and intellectual disabilities," or for staff specialist positions like attorneys, scientists, and chaplains or to fill critical hiring needs.

Appointments made under Schedule A do not end at the end of the current president’s term, and appointments are not required to be made on the basis of merit.

Under Biden’s term, over 100 immigration judges were hired through Schedule A for the Immigration Review division. A slew of trial attorneys were hired for the ENRD, which enforces environmental laws and focuses on environmental justice, climate change, and the interests of Native American Tribes. Also hired were dozens of antitrust division trial attorneys.

Michael Chamberlain, director of Protect the Public’s Trust which provided the DCNF with the data, said, "The Biden-Harris administration and its allies have already signaled their intent to hamstring their successor and prevent a future president from reversing their agenda. Exploiting non-competitive hiring authorities to fill career civil service positions could be just another component of this scheme. It’s no wonder that the public’s trust in its government has all but disappeared."

"The administration is also using Schedule A to install immigration judges — again, outside of the normal merit-based system — who will rule on cases of those in a position to benefit from the administration’s immigration policies," PPT said, adding that "The ENRD is a vital office in advancing the Biden-Harris administration’s energy and climate policies, and the placement of Biden-Harris loyalists is a means to defend those policies even if a future Trump (or other) administration seeks to change them." 

“Until recently, antitrust enforcement was a relatively technical and non-partisan division,” PPT’s advance press release to the DCNF stated. “But the Biden-Harris administration’s increasingly aggressive implementation has sparked complaints of politicized enforcement.”