Trump Reclassifies 8,000 Senior Civil Servants As Fireable At Will, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That The Government Was Staffed By People Who Could Decline To Carry Out Orders

The Filing

WASHINGTON. President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday afternoon formally creating a new federal employment category, Schedule Policy/Career, reclassifying roughly 8,000 senior career positions and stripping them of the civil service protections that had previously prevented their occupants from being fired for any reason at all. The action completes a project the administration had pursued since the president's first day in office and resolves a long-standing concern that the people running the federal government could not be removed simply for declining to do what they were told.

Approximately 97 percent of the affected positions sit at or above the GS-15 level, the government's most senior career rank, and include agency division heads, chief information officers, senior attorneys, budget officials, and the people who write the nation's regulations. Under the new designation, those employees may be disciplined or fired for any reason, or for no reason, with no right to appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board and no ability to contest the reclassification that made them fireable in the first place.

Officials framed the change as a victory for self-government. The director of the Office of Personnel Management told reporters that the order represented, in the administration's mind, a restoration of the democratic process, explaining that employees who allow their personal views to interfere with carrying out the administration's directives could now be removed effectively at will. The order itself states that the ability to fire such workers is essential to protecting democratic self government by an elected president, a sentence appearing in a document signed by a president who has lost the national popular vote in two of his three presidential campaigns.

The administration emphasized restraint. A senior administration official described the reclassified workers as a relatively small slice of senior career positions, noting that the figure of 8,000 fell well below the agency's own earlier estimate of 50,000 and outside projections that had reached 200,000. The official added that no further positions were expected to be converted in the immediate future, though more could be added later at the president's discretion, an arrangement under which the number of federal employees who can be fired at will is simultaneously final and unlimited.

The reclassified employees will additionally lose eligibility for student loan repayment assistance and for recruitment, retention, and relocation incentives, ensuring that the senior experts most able to leave for the private sector now have several more reasons to do so. The order revives a policy known in the first term as Schedule F, which President Trump signed in the closing weeks of 2020 and which President Biden rescinded before it could take effect. The 2024 rule Biden issued to keep it from returning was itself rescinded in order to make Wednesday's order possible.

At press time, the roughly 8,000 employees newly cleared to be fired for any reason were being assured by officials that they remained free at all times to speak truth to power, provided they understood that power was now free to fire them for it.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump, who gains the ability to remove roughly 8,000 senior career officials who decline to carry out his directives and to deter everyone else from resisting orders or reporting misconduct.
§The Office of Personnel Management and its director, Scott Kupor, who delivered the administration's long-sought personnel tool and successfully described firing nonpartisan experts at will as a restoration of democracy.
§Political appointees and loyalty-focused managers across federal agencies, who may now discipline or fire senior subordinates for any reason, with no appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board.
§Stephen Miller and the architects of expanded executive control, whose vision of a presidentially obedient civil service moved from white paper to actual personnel records.
§Future presidents of any party, who inherit a precedent under which the pool of fireable career employees can be enlarged at the chief executive's discretion.
§Private-sector employers, who stand to recruit the senior specialists now stripped of the loan repayment and retention incentives that had kept them in government.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment