The Trump administration is planning to make it easier to discipline—and potentially fire—career officials in senior positions across the government, a move that would affect roughly 50,000 federal workers.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which oversees the federal workforce, is set to issue a final rule on Thursday that creates a category of worker for high-ranking career employees whose work focuses on executing the administration’s policies. Workers who fall into that category would no longer be subject to rules that for decades have set a high bar for firing federal employees.
While political appointees at agencies are considered at-will employees who serve at the discretion of the president, career employees have long enjoyed strong job protections, including the ability to appeal firings, suspensions or disciplinary action to an independent board. Workers that fall under the new category wouldn’t be able to appeal to the board.
The change is part of a far-reaching effort by the administration to overhaul federal agencies and reduce the size of the government’s workforce. Senior political appointees, spurred on by President Trump ’s longstanding contention that a “deep state” is undermining his agenda, have shut down government programs, fired thousands of employees and offered others voluntary separation agreements.
Office of Personnel Management officials said the rule is aimed in part at disciplining federal workers who stand in the way of Trump’s policies. OPM said the new category applies to senior positions that are policy-determining, policymaking or policy-advocating in nature.
“People can’t be conscientious objectors in the workforce in a way where it interferes with their ability to carry out their mission,” OPM Director Scott Kupor said in an interview. “When conscientious objection becomes sabotage or trying to find ways to thwart the objectives of the administration—that is not allowed.”
Federal worker unions worry that Trump’s advisers could use the new rules as a pretext to oust government workers whose political views are at odds with the president’s. Some union officials have warned that the administration could seek to significantly expand the number of federal workers who fall into the new category.
The roughly 50,000 employees that OPM says could be affected by the rule change account for a relatively small subsection of the 2.3 million people working for the federal government in civilian jobs.
Civil-service revisions put in place in the 19th century turned federal employment from a partisan spoils system into a professional workforce that is largely insulated from partisan interference.
OPM officials said the administration won’t discipline employees based on their political party or ask who they worked for. They said the rule won’t be used as a justification for mass layoffs, adding that the administration will adhere to federal rules that protect whistleblowers.
Senior officials at government agencies have assembled lists of positions that are eligible for the new employment category established under the rule. OPM officials said they would complete the full list within 30 days of the release of the new rule. Trump is then expected to issue an executive order that places specific positions in the new category.
OPM officials said the rule follows through on an executive order signed by Trump on the first day of his second term that called for the implementation of merit-based government service to “prevent the hiring of individuals who are unwilling to defend the Constitution or to faithfully serve the Executive Branch.”
Shortly before leaving office at the end of his first term, Trump issued an executive order that made similar changes to how federal workers are classified. President Joe Biden rescinded the executive order.
The final rule cites several examples of behavior that could result in disciplinary action, including leaks to the media to subvert policy. It cites an email that an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission administrative judge sent to then-acting EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas and all EEOC employees shortly after Trump was inaugurated, saying: “I will not participate in attempts to target private citizens and colleagues through the recent illegal executive orders.”
“If you’ve announced to all of your co-workers that you hate the administration,…and then you perform badly at your job and you don’t do anything,” Kupor said, “the fact that you said you’re going to resist to all of your co-workers is something that could be taken into account.”
The Government Accountability Project and National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association sued the Trump administration last year, after Trump signed the executive order that led to the rule set to be published on Thursday. The group said the administration’s planned move ignores a 1978 law that provides job protections to career federal employees and limits at-will employment to political appointees.
“It will be much easier for the administration to squelch dissent or to thwart the work of civil servants who are trying to ensure that they are performing due diligence when it comes to policy development,” said Love Rutledge , a coach for federal employees.
Write to Natalie Andrews at natalie.andrews@wsj.com
