In its ongoing quest to shrink the federal government, the Trump administration on Thursday issued a final rule that would reclassify roughly 50,000 federal employees, making it easier to fire them by stripping them of civil service protections.
In a move affecting about 2% of the federal workforce, some career employees who work in policy-related areas will now be classified as at-will employees. The Office of Personnel Management said the rule is intended to “increase career employee accountability.”
“These positions will remain career jobs filled on a nonpartisan basis,” OPM said. “Yet they will be at-will positions excepted from adverse action procedures or appeals. This will allow agencies to quickly remove employees from critical positions who engage in misconduct, perform poorly, or obstruct the democratic process by intentionally subverting Presidential directives.”
The effort to reclassify federal employees dates back to the first Trump administration. In 2020, President Trump attempted to create a new class of federal employees, known as Schedule F, but President Biden reversed Trump’s order and put in place new rules that bolstered civil service protections. OPM’s new rule rescinds the Biden rule change and creates a new classification for federal employees called Schedule Policy/Career.
Officials at OPM have said the reclassification aims to crack down on dissent within the federal government, including resistance to implementing Trump policies. “We have a boatload of empirical data that there is misconduct and policy resistance among career civil servants,” an OPM official told Government Executive.
The new rule is scheduled to take effect on March 8, but unions representing federal workers have vowed to sue to stop it. Skye Perryman, CEO of Democracy Forward, which is representing some employee groups, said the rule “opens the door to politically motivated firings and hirings, which have already occurred since President Trump took office.”
Max Stier, who leads the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that promotes good governance, said the OPM rule is reminiscent of the 19th-century spoils system that once defined the federal workforce.
“No matter what the administration says, today’s action has nothing to do with restoring merit in federal employment,” Stier told Government Executive. “This new designation can be used to remove expert career federal employees who place the law and service to the public ahead of blind loyalty and replace them with political supporters who will unquestioningly do the president’s bidding.”