US rule targets federal workers who don't advance Trump's policies

In the latest potential shake-up to the federal workforce, the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) released a proposed rule (PDF) April 18 that would reclassify around 50,000 federal employees and allow agencies to more easily fire those involved in policy creation who do not obey presidential directives.

“If these government workers refuse to advance the policy interests of the President, or are engaging in corrupt behavior, they should no longer have a job,” President Donald J. Trump posted on Truth Social April 18. “This is common sense, and will allow the federal government to finally be ‘run like a business.’”

The proposal follows an executive order Trump issued on Jan. 20 that aims to circumvent the current steps required to remove a type of federal worker known as a career civil servant—non-partisan, permanent employees who meet certain criteria, including having a tenure of at least three years. The rules that govern federal workers are complex and regulated by multiple laws, but contain employment protections, such as having to go through a multi-step process subject to appeals before termination, that allow career civil servants to do their jobs without fear of political retaliation.

Under the new classification, called Schedule Policy/Career, federal employees would be “at-will,” and could be fired more easily for “poor performance or misconduct, such as corruption or for injecting partisanship into the performance of their official duties,” according to the proposed rule text. The rule does not explicitly define “partisanship,” but says that employees who do not “faithfully implement administration policies to the best of their ability” will be dismissed.

The Schedule Policy/Career is a slightly changed version of the controversial Schedule F that Trump proposed during his first administration. The Joe Biden administration later reversed the Schedule F classification executive order. The OPM under Biden issued a final rule in April 2024 to further tighten federal worker protections.

“Policy-making federal employees have a tremendous amount of influence over our laws and our lives,” acting OPM director Chuck Ezell says in a statement. “Such employees must be held to the highest standards of conduct.”

The proposed rule comes as the Trump administration has engaged in a wide-ranging effort to decrease the federal workforce through various reduction-in-force plans, early retirement incentives, and other mechanisms. Numerous lawsuits are underway challenging these moves.

Everett Kelley, the national president of the union group the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), says the president’s action will politicize the work of career federal employees and undermine the current merit-based hiring system. “This is another in a series of deliberate moves by this administration to corrupt the federal government and replace qualified public servants with political cronies,” he says in a statement. The AFGE and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, another federal employee union, filed a lawsuit Jan. 29 against Trump and Ezell, saying that the executive order exceeded presidential authority. “Politicizing the career civil service is a threat to our democracy and to the integrity of all the programs and services Americans rely on,” Kelley says in the AFGE statement.

In a media briefing April 22, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that in reclassifying federal workers as Schedule Policy/Career, the president is making sure that federal workers are being held accountable for corrupt behavior. “It will make it easier to get rid of rogue bureaucrats who are engaging in corruption,” she said. The American public duly elected this president, she said, therefore his orders are the will of the public. “If you work for the government, you should be adhering to the will of the American public and advancing the administration’s goals and interests. And if you are not doing that, you should go find another job whose interests you align with.”

In the proposed rule, the OPM estimates that about 2% of the federal workforce, around 50,000 employees, would be reclassified as Schedule Policy/Career, but “the President may move a greater or smaller number of positions.”

The proposed rule was published in the Federal Register on April 23 and is open to public comment until May 23.