Trump Seeks to Put More Civil Servants Under His Control (2)

President Donald Trump said Friday he was pushing through a massive overhaul of the civil service system, giving him power to directly hire and fire as many as 50,000 jobs reserved for career federal employees.

The changes, outlined in a proposed rule by the Office of Personnel Management, give size and shape to an executive order Trump signed on his first day back in office. If approved, they would represent the biggest change to laws governing political patronage since 1883.

“Moving forward, career government employees, working on policy matters, will be classified as ‘Schedule Policy/Career,’ and will be held to the highest standards of conduct and performance,” Trump said in a post to his social media network. “If these government workers refuse to advance the policy interests of the President, or are engaging in corrupt behavior, they should no longer have a job.”

Trump’s January executive order was similar to one he signed just before the 2020 presidential election, which created a new classification of federal workers which he first called “Schedule F.” It was immediately revoked by former President Joe Biden, and restoring it was a key aim of Project 2025, the conservative manifesto for creating a more powerful Republican presidency.

The directive adds a new rung of federal employees sitting between presidential appointees and the senior executive service, the top level of career federal employees. The new classification includes “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating” jobs in the federal government — positions that don’t usually change from one administration to the next.

“Policy-making federal employees have a tremendous amount of influence over our laws and our lives,” said acting OPM director Charles Ezell. “Such employees must be held to the highest standards of conduct. Americans deserve a government that is both effective and accountable.

The reclassified positions won’t be political appointments, the new rules emphasize. But Trump will be able to promote — and possibly fire — career employees he sees as undermining his agenda.

“They are not required to personally or politically support the current President or the policies of the current administration,” the proposed rule says. “They are required to faithfully implement administration policies to the best of their ability, consistent with their constitutional oath and the vesting of executive authority solely in the President. Failure to do so is grounds for dismissal.”

OPM estimates that 50,000 positions would ultimately move into the Schedule Policy/Career category — about 2% of the federal workforce. Unlike Trump’s first attempt to overhaul civil service, he’s reserved for himself the authority to determine which positions will be included.

The measure is one that Trump aides have said is essential to implement a policy agenda they believe was undermined by career federal employees during the president’s first term.

The administration is already facing four lawsuits disputing the legality of the overhaul, all pending in district courts. The American Federation of Government Employees, a union of more than 800,000 federal workers, asked a federal judge in January to overturn Trump’s Schedule Policy/Career executive order. The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents workers in 37 government offices, sued to stop the policy on Inauguration Day.

Pendleton Act

While civil service laws dating back to the 1883 Pendleton Act require most federal jobs to be awarded on merit and not political affiliation, it’s not always clear for which positions those laws apply. Adding to the confusion, many political appointees will “burrow in” to civil service jobs just before the White House changes parties.

Just before Trump retook office, the Biden administration tried to throw a legal roadblock to his reclassification of federal employees. A little-noticed opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel advised federal agencies that presidential appointments must “exercise significant authority pursuant to the laws of the United States,” as opposed to the “broad swath of federal employees” who do not wield that authority and are protected from political firings.

Anne Joseph O’Connell, a professor at Stanford Law School, said the opinion could be a “small obstacle” to Trump’s new rules, but the proposed rule incorporates the Biden-era definition.

According to the Plum Book, which serves as sort of a job-shopping list for incoming members of the new administration, there are more than 8,000 patronage jobs in the federal government. Those include more than 1,100 top positions that the president fills with Senate confirmation, and more than 500 other presidential appointments that don’t need Senate approval. Others include agency-level policy advisers, lawyers and confidential aides who support top government officials.

(Updates with details on the proposed rule. An earlier version corrected the name of the agency codifying the directive.)

To contact the reporters on this story:
Gregory Korte in Washington at gkorte@bloomberg.net;
Courtney Rozen in Arlington at crozen4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Laura Davison at ldavison4@bloomberg.net

Meghashyam Mali, Justin Sink

© 2025 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Used with permission.