WASHINGTON (AP) – The government's top human resources office announced new rules Thursday. make it difficult He wants to fire thousands of federal employees and strangle the former president. donald trump Promise of Fundamentally reshaping the workforce along ideological lines if he regains the White House in November.
Office of Personnel Management regulations prohibit career civil servants from being reclassified as political appointees or other at-will workers, making these workers more easily forced out of their jobs. This is in response to President Trump's 2020 Schedule F, which allowed tens of thousands of 2.2 million federal employees to be reclassified and reduced job security.
president joe biden Upon taking office, Schedule F was revoked. But if President Trump reinstates it during his second administration, it could significantly increase the number of about 4,000 federal employees who are considered political appointees and typically change hands with each new president.
The number of employees affected by Schedule F is unknown. However, the National Treasury Employees Union obtained the following information through a Freedom of Information request. Suggestive document Federal employees, such as office managers and human resources and cybersecurity professionals, may also have been subject to reclassification, the report said. This means the scope of President Trump's order may have been broader than previously thought.
The new rules could help counter future Schedule F orders by spelling out procedural requirements for reclassifying federal employees and making it clear that no employee, regardless of their job title, can be stripped of the civil service protections they have earned. There is sex. It also makes clear that the policymaking classification applies to non-career political appointments and not to career civil servants.
“The president's arbitrary firing of nonpartisan professionals staffing federal agencies solely to make room for hand-picked partisan allies,” Doreen Greenwald, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said in a statement. “It will become much more difficult in the future.”
Good government groups, liberal think tanks, and activists support this rule. They believe that replacing existing government employees with new, more conservative replacements “ project 2025”
The plan would vet and potentially fire scores of federal employees, as well as hire conservative replacements, in an effort to clean up the “deep state” government bureaucracy that leading Republicans have long denounced. is required.
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which heads a coalition of about 30 advocacy groups supporting the rule, called the rule “very powerful” and said it would be a “very powerful” move to support Project 2025. He said it would be able to effectively counter the “resource-rich anti-democratic groups” behind the move.
“This is not a nuisance, even though it may be billed as such,” Perryman said. “This is very fundamental to ensuring that the government can provide services to the people, and to us, that is the essence of democracy.”
The 237-page final rule will be published in the Federal Register and officially take effect next month. The Office of Personnel Management first proposed the change last November and has since reviewed it and responded to more than 4,000 public comments. Although executives from some top conservative organizations also opposed the new rules, about two-thirds of comments were supportive.
If Trump wins another term, his administration could direct the Office of Personnel Management to draft new rules. But the process would take months, require detailed explanations of why the new regulations would be an improvement, and could open up legal challenges by opponents.
Rob Schreiber, deputy director of the Office of Personnel Management, said the new rules ensure protections for federal employees “cannot be erased through technical personnel processes,” which is “what Schedule F was intended to do.” Ta.
“This rule ensures that Americans, regardless of their personal political beliefs, can continue to rely on federal employees to use their skills and expertise to do their jobs,” Shriver said on a call with reporters. It's meant to be done.”
He said 85% of federal employees are based outside the Washington area and are “our friends, neighbors, and family” and are “dedicated to serving the American people, not political objectives.” It pointed out.
