Trump makes it easier to fire 8,000 federal workers
By Tami Luhby, CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order that wipes away civil service protections from roughly 8,000 high-level federal workers by making them at-will employees.
The move is the president’s latest effort to overhaul the federal workforce, which he views as an impediment to carrying out his policies. During his second term, he has directed agencies to shrink their staffing, terminated union contracts in the name of national security and taken other steps that critics argue politicizes federal employment.
Wednesday’s executive order reclassifies about 8,000 senior policy positions into a new category called Schedule Policy/Career. They include directors, chiefs of staffs, senior advisers, policy analysts and those with “significant involvement” in drafting regulations and determining who gets federal grants.
“Agencies can remove employees in Schedule Policy/Career for poor performance, misconduct, corruption, or subversion of Presidential directives without lengthy procedural hurdles that often prevent accountability,” according to a White House fact sheet.
Attempts to shift policy personnel into at-will positions dates back to the end of Trump’s first term, when he signed an order creating a new category called Schedule F, which could have affected an estimated 50,000 workers. Former President Joe Biden reversed that directive, but Trump quickly revived the effort when he took office last year. The Office of Personnel Management finalized a rule creating the category in February.
“This is very much about accountability,” OPM director Scott Kupor told reporters Wednesday. “It’s also about a restoration, in our mind, of the democratic process.”
The Schedule Policy/Career designation is currently the subject of several lawsuits.
“When government experts can be fired without cause, it’s not just federal workers who are harmed — it’s the people across the country who rely on these essential services every day,” said Skye Perryman, CEO of Democracy Forward, which brought one of the suits.
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