President Donald Trump announced a new rule Friday reclassifying thousands of career government employees as “at-will,” which would make it significantly easier to fire them.
The rule stems from a Day One executive order that directed the Office of Personnel Management to issue new “civil service regulations” for all career government employees.
Trump took similar action during his first term in office, signing an executive order reclassifying some government employees as “Schedule F” and stripping them of some civil protections in the process. Former President Joe Biden would go on to rescind Trump’s Schedule F order in 2021.
“This is common sense, and will allow the federal government to finally be ‘run like a business,’” the president added. “We must root out corruption and implement accountability in our Federal Workforce!”
The White House estimates that roughly 50,000 government employees will now be categorized as “at will,” which would allow them to be terminated for “for poor performance, misconduct, corruption, or subversion of presidential directives, without lengthy procedural hurdles.”
Since reentering office in January, Trump has taken significant steps to shrink the federal workforce. The Department of Government Efficiency, headed in all-but-name by Elon Musk, has worked with federal departments and agencies to identify alleged “waste” and fire employees deemed to be disloyal, or even actively undermining, the administration.
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Furthermore, the White House directed all departments and agencies to submit two-phased “reduction in force” plans to be implemented by the fall.
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