The Trump administration is working on a new federal personnel rule that would make it easier for President Donald Trump to fire about 50,000 senior career civil servants whose roles affect public policy.
This move would affect about 2% of the federal workforce.
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is expected to create a new “Schedule Policy/Career” classification this week. It is a resurrection of the president’s “Schedule F” proposal that he put forward near the end of his first term.
Former President Joe Biden scrapped Schedule F shortly after taking office in 2021.
The White House says the change is needed to remove federal workers who resist or try to sabotage the president’s agenda.
Under the new rule, federal agencies are empowered to shift jobs that affect policy out of the traditional competitive civil service and into the Schedule Policy/Career category. Employees in this category do not have civil service protections such as standard notice requirements and the right to appeal their firings with the Merit Systems Protection Board.
Critics, including unions and government watchdogs, warn that the new rule would politicize civil service and return Washington, D.C. to a system where job security depends on partisan loyalty.
National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) President Doreen Greenwald called the rule “a dangerous step backward to a political spoils system that Congress expressly rejected 142 years ago.” She said the plan “converts federal nonpartisan career jobs into political favors for loyalists” and unconstitutionally deprives workers of due-process rights.