Case in point, via political scientist Adam Bonica:

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) recently unveiled a "Merit Hiring Plan" that, despite its name, signals a profound departure from a cornerstone of American democracy: the non-partisan, merit-based civil service. Under this plan, every federal job applicant from GS-5 positions upward must now write essays explaining how they would "advance the President's Executive Orders and policy priorities." Political appointees must approve every hire through "executive interviews" that assess "commitment to American ideals."

The hiring reforms aim to complete the systematic takeover of the federal government as outlined in Project 2025 taken directly from the Authoritarian playbook. First came mass firings disguised as efficiency reforms. Then the gutting of oversight agencies. Next, the weakening of enforcement through executive orders. Now, the final step: replacing career professionals with political loyalists through ideological screening. A merit-based civil service that took generations to build is being dismantled via memo.

This pattern is grimly familiar from democratic backsliding worldwide. Hungary and Turkey purged the bureaucracy of the insufficiently loyal. Poland replaced career prosecutors with political allies. In each case, the rhetoric—efficiency, reform, national values—matches what we see in OPM's memo. In each case, the result was identical: competent professionals replaced by incompetent loyalists, leading to corruption, dysfunction, and democratic decay.

To grasp what we stand to lose, we must recall the "spoils system" that merit-based civil service replaced. For America's first century, federal jobs were political prizes. Each presidential election could trigger a wholesale replacement of government workers. Competence was secondary to loyalty.

You can read the rest of Professor Bonica's piece to see what happened in the past (e.g., no mail service!).