You’re off on several points: not just that they’re tax-paying citizens but also that what makes it illegal is that civil service positions are merit-based and

You’re off on several points: not just that they’re tax-paying citizens but also that what makes it illegal is that civil service positions are merit-based and have protections against arbitrary dismissal. The whole point is to have a professional workforce rather than every 4-8 years having a lot of disruption when people are replaced with supporters of the new president. We had so many problems with that during the age of the spoils system that federal laws were enacted to prevent it. The key one here is that you can’t fire someone without cause and poor performance has to be documented as a consistent, fair standard and low performers given a period of time to improve (i.e. Biden couldn’t have simply said to cross reference the staff list with registered Republicans and then said he didn’t think they were as productive, he’d have had to show that the same standard was applied to everyone). Now, it’s true that non-unionized private sector workers don’t have those protections, especially in right-to-work states. That’s not because they’re bad but because there’s been a campaign by businesses since approximately the New Deal era to convince workers that they shouldn’t ask for contracts or negotiate collectively. I note that the executive class funding that position that do have contracts and look out for other members of their own class, so perhaps that’s not the model we should embrace. Tech workers gave up trillions of dollars and job security by not unionizing so it’s certainly paid off well for their bosses.