Trump's new order aims to give him more control over the federal workforce, potentially leading to firings based on political loyalty. Critics argue this politicization of civil service undermines the government's effectiveness.
President Donald Trump wasted no time signing an executive order Monday that aims to give him more control over the federal workforce – whom he has long vilified as the “deep state.” The order, in a highly unusual move, seeks to wipe away a rule former President Joe Biden put in place last year and is expected to face multiple legal challenges.
The new order revives an executive order Trump signed shortly before the 2020 election that created a category for federal employees involved in policy – known as Schedule F – that would make those workers easier to fire. Biden had quickly reversed that order and then last year finalized a new rule that further bolstered protections for career federal workers. However, Trump’s latest executive order directs the Office of Personnel Management to rescind any changes made by the rule that would impede or affect the implementation of Trump’s 2020 directive. Trump also revoked his predecessor’s 2021 executive order that rescinded the original Schedule F order, a more conventional move. Like the 2020 executive order, Trump’s new directive is expected to swiftly wind up in court. Traditionally, undoing or revising a rule requires a new rule, a process that can take months, and cannot be done by executive order, experts said. This move is viewed by many as an attempt to politicize the civil service, making it more susceptible to the whims of the current administration. Trump’s 2020 order left many federal employees fearing for their jobs. It would have given him and his agency appointees more leeway in the hiring and firing of federal staffers deemed disloyal, a move that critics say politicizes civil service and could lead to career officials being pushed out for political reasons and replaced with those committed to the president. It would have stripped federal workers of their due process protections and eliminated their ability to appeal to other independent agencies, said Joe Spielberger, senior policy counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group. An initial estimate found it would have applied to about 50,000 workers, though experts believe it could have affected many more. “President Trump’s order is a blatant attempt to corrupt the federal government by eliminating employees’ due process rights so they can be fired for political reasons,” Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 750,000 workers, told CNN of the new order. “It will remove hundreds of thousands of federal jobs from the nonpartisan, professional civil service and make them answerable to the will of one man.” Meanwhile, the National Treasury Employees Union promised to “fight” Trump’s effort to overhaul the civil service. “The American people deserve to have government services delivered by qualified, nonpartisan professionals who do their job regardless of which party occupies the White House, and NTEU will fight to preserve that tradition,” the union’s national president, Doreen Greenwald, said in a statement.Trump’s renewed effort to reshape the federal government and its workforce aims at ensuring loyalty to him and his policies in order avoid the hurdles he felt blocked his ability to get key initiatives over the finish line during his first term. In Monday’s executive order, he wrote, “Accountability is essential for all Federal employees.” “Any power they have is delegated by the President, and they must be accountable to the President, who is the only member of the executive branch … In recent years, however, there have been numerous and well-documented cases of career Federal employees resisting and undermining the policies and directives of their executive leadership,” the order reads. Critics, however, say that it would send the country back 140 years to a time when elected officials hired political supporters to government jobs. Any effort to undermine the apolitical, merit-based civil service is a “mistake” that undermines the capability of the federal government to deliver good results to the American public, Max Stier, CEO at Partnership for Public Service, told CNN. Even if it doesn’t lead to a wave of firings, the executive order will prompt some federal employees to reconsider challenging any directives they might consider illegal, unethical or against their professional standards, Spielberger said. “A goal is just to create this massive chilling effect across the federal government where people are in fear and just kind of obeying in advance, so to speak,” he said.
DONALD TRUMP EXECUTIVE ORDER FEDERAL WORKERS SCHEDULE F CIVIL SERVICE POLITICIZATION
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