Trump reclassifies thousands of federal employees, making them easier to fire
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Executive order effectively reinstates ‘Schedule F’, which sought to categorize workers as political hires. Donald Trump on Monday issued an executive order reclassifying thousands of federal employees as political hires, making them easier to fire if deemed insufficiently loyal to the new president and his aims.
One of a promised flurry of measures signed on Trump’s first day back in power, the order effectively reinstates “Schedule F”, which sought to allow for the reclassification of tens of thousands of federal workers. Schedule F changed civil service rules to allow for a broad swath of career federal employees to be fired without civil service protection, reclassifying their jobs as political appointments.
In the executive order posted Monday night on the White House website titled “Initial rescissions of harmful executive orders and actions,” Trump revoked an executive order issued by Joe Biden two days after assuming office in 2021. That order revoked a different late-term Trump order that redesignated many federal civilian employees, which exempted them from civil service protections.
The Biden administration had rescinded that order, and then in April last year countered it with a rule Joe Biden called a “step toward combatting corruption and partisan interference to ensure civil servants are able to focus on the most important task at hand: delivering for the American people”.
But key aides to Trump have long heralded mass government firings as part of an attack on the so-called “administrative” or “deep” state, a supposed permanent government of bureaucrats, operatives and agents dedicated to blocking radical rightwing reform.
