WASHINGTON—“Tailor Gunner Joe” McCarthy, the right-wing Wisconsin Republican senator known for his witch-hunts of “Reds Under The Bed” in the federal government in 1950 apparently rides again from beyond the grave, this time in the so-called American Accountability Foundation. So says Clarence Kelley, the Government Employees president.
But while a sheepish Senate ducked censuring McCarthy for years, AFGE is calling out the foundation for demonizing civil servants. And it notes the hard-right Heritage Foundation, author of Project 2025, also known as Donald Trump’s Republican platform, funded the American Accountability Foundation’s “Bureaucrat Watchlist.”
McCarthy also wasn’t shy about alleging “Communist” connections in organized labor, either.
The foundation’s watch list names 10 top officials, most if not all career civil servants in the Department of Homeland Security, complete with their titles and photos. It says the ten provide an open door for migrants to the U.S. It promises more such lists, in more agencies. AFGE called that “ominous.”
Of the 10 whom the foundation fingered, eight are women, one man is Hispanic-named, and two of the women are immigration judges. They’re members of what used to be a 300-person union of Immigration Law Judges in the Justice Department until a Trump-named panel ruled all were supervisors and thus banned from unionizing.
“Creating watch lists of so-called subversives inside government is a tactic straight out of the McCarthy playbook, plain in its intent to terrorize individual civil servants and frighten other Americans away from getting involved in politics and public service,” Kelley said.
“Far from doing anything to improve government, this shameful, un-American behavior makes it more difficult to attract top talent to important government positions, hurting the country in the process.”
The foundation, which has been granted non-profit status, says it “deploys aggressive research and investigations to advance conservative messaging, rapid response and congressional investigations while heavily scrutinizing politicians and establishment organizations, policies and projects.”
Such scrutiny, common in the dark underbelly of politics, is called “opposition research.”
“The Biden/Harris bureaucrat watch list goes live TODAY” the foundation trumpeted on October 23. It promised to name “subversive, leftist bureaucrats serving in the federal government who cannot be trusted to enforce our immigration laws under a future administration intent on securing our border.
“Not only are we naming names, we have included a secure tip line on the website so we can hear from concerned fellow civil servants about who else belongs on this list.” Anonymous tips aided Tail Gunner Joe’s witch-hunts, too. But the tips produced little evidence while wrecking careers.
The foundation’s president, Thomas Jones, said the watch list not only would help secure the U.S.-Mexico border but it would be “protecting our system of government as laid out by our Founders…rogue bureaucrats who enforce their own agendas are operating in direct opposition to the Constitution.”
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