President Trump has once again issued an executive order creating a new category of political appointees within the federal workforce. Previously called Schedule F, it mirrors an executive order issued late in his first term that was rescinded by former President Biden days after he took office.
The new directive replaces the letter "F" with the words "Policy/Career," among other small changes.
The controversial move is part of Trump's plan to rid the government of what he calls "rogue bureaucrats" and dismantle "the Deep State."
The executive order directs agencies to identify and reclassify career civil servants whose jobs are "confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating" in character as political appointees, stripping them of civil service protections.
Trump has long argued that his administration should have greater flexibility in appointing people who will faithfully carry out his agenda and firing those who won't.
It's unclear how many civil servants could become political appointees under this move. Earlier estimates ranged from 50,000 to hundreds of thousands of workers.
Of the 2.3 million civilians in the federal government, roughly 4,000 are political appointees now.
In anticipation of this move, the federal Office of Personnel Management issued a rule last year aimed at making it harder to convert career federal employees into political appointees. The rule establishes procedural requirements for such moves and an appeals process for employees.
Trump's new directive orders the OPM director to rescind all changes made by that rule.
Critics of the plan have warned that it threatens to hamper the government's ability to perform essential services for the American public.
"Things like the safety of air or food or your workplace … do depend upon having a qualified, nonpartisan workforce to make sure things actually function," said Don Moynihan, professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, in an interview last summer. "As those things start to disappear, it's going to be very hard to rebuild them in the long term."
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