The Trump administration on Thursday announced its long-awaited final rule that will make it easier to fire civil servants deemed uncooperative with the president’s agenda.
The rule marks the latest chapter in an effort launched during President Donald Trump’s first term aimed at federal career employees viewed as hostile to carrying out the administration’s policy priorities.
The Office of Personnel Management rule issued Thursday will move some career federal employees into a new category dubbed “Schedule Policy/Career,” exempting them from some job protections available to government workers.
The administration says the rule will increase accountability by easing terminations of certain employees with sway over crafting agency policies. Trump’s critics warn that the move threatens to politicize the nonpartisan federal workforce and they’re vowing to fight it in court.
The rule says it 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.”
Career federal employees “are free to agree or disagree with obviously any of the priorities that the president has — this president or future presidents,” OPM Director Scott Kupor told reporters Thursday.
But, “if their disagreement leads them to then try to actively thwart or undermine the execution of those priorities,” that’s “not acceptable,” Kupor said. “You can’t run an organization if people are refusing to actually carry out the lawful objectives and orders of the administration.”
The final rule could affect tens of thousands of career positions across the government.
OPM said Thursday that the agency had received proposals from agencies including about 50,000 positions that could be covered under the rule. Those proposals are being reviewed by the White House and the actual designation of positions will be made by the president, according to OPM.
The overhaul is a long-standing priority for Trump and his allies, who accused civil servants across the government of attempting to stymie or slow-walk Trump’s agenda during his first term. Trump proposed a similar effort dubbed Schedule F during his first term, but that was upended by the Biden administration.
Trump issued an executive order on the first day of his second term calling for a civil service overhaul and accusing federal workers of “resisting and undermining the policies and directives of their executive leadership.”
The final rule doesn’t take effect until 30 days after its formal publication. Until the president issues an executive order placing positions into the new Schedule Policy/Career category, agencies “must continue to treat employees and positions as they are currently classified,” Kupor told agency leaders Thursday in a memo.
Lawsuits ahead
The reclassification effort has been a lightning rod for criticisms from federal worker unions, Democrats and other Trump opponents who warn the effort will allow the administration to politicize the civil service and chill speech inside the government.
“This is a deliberate attempt to do through regulation what the law does not allow — strip public servants of their rights and make it easier to fire them for political reasons and harm the American people through doing so,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of the group Democracy Forward.
“We will return to court to stop this unlawful rule and will use every legal tool available to hold this administration accountable to the people,” Perryman said.
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said that turning “tens or maybe hundreds of thousands” of government workers “into at-will employees doesn’t make government more accountable. It makes it more vulnerable to pressure, retaliation, and political interference, which is exactly the opposite of what the public is asking for right now.”
The federal employee union “has successfully challenged this administration’s efforts to undermine the civil service and will continue to do so, including through an imminent court challenge to the final rule brought with a coalition of unions and other plaintiffs,” Kelley said.
