Since taking office in late January, the Trump administration – led by Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) – has repeatedly attacked government employees and reduced the federal workforce. Already, thousands of workers have left the federal government, through buyouts, retirements, and layoffs – organizations such as the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) have taken to the courts to fight the latter. The Trump administration recently signaled that it is preparing to potentially fire up to 50,000 additional employees, roughly 2 percent of the federal workforce.
[For more information about the federal workforce, see this analysis from the Pew Research Center.]
Although the president makes numerous political appointments during their four (or eight) years in office (e.g., secretaries and directors of federal departments and agencies), most federal workers are non-political civil servants, who typically remain in government no matter the party in power. As such, civil servants have numerous protections against politically motivated employment decisions, including layoffs. Trump and his allies have long bemoaned these protections and have repeatedly claimed, with no evidence, that the federal workforce is rife with corruption that needs to be excised.
During the late stages of the first Trump presidency, the administration announced a plan, via executive order (EO), to convert around 50,000 federal employees with policy-related duties to a status similar to that of political appointees. In other words, rather than civil servants, they would be at-will employees who could be easily fired at any time and for any reason. President Biden immediately revoked the EO announcing the plan, known then as “Schedule F”, upon entering office in early 2021.
This year, Trump issued a new EO on Inauguration Day – Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce – that revived the Schedule F plan under a new moniker, “Schedule Policy/Career.” On April 18, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) released a fact sheet about the plan and published the formal proposed rule to the federal register five days later. The public has 30 days – through May 23 – to submit comments on the proposal. At the time of writing, nearly 4,000 comments have been posted, many of which criticize the proposal on legal and ethical grounds. For example, many commenters believe that the administration simply wants to remove any government workers who are not politically aligned with Trump and replace them with sycophants who will not question his actions.
FABBS will continue to monitor this development, especially as it pertains to employees of the federal science agencies.
