Trump Tightens Grip on Federal Workers Even in Scaled-Back Form

As former and future President Donald Trump geared up his reelection campaign in 2023, he pledged to fire “rogue bureaucrats” by stripping their civil service protections.

“I will wield that power very aggressively,” he said in a video address.

On Wednesday, Trump signed a far less aggressive version of that proposal that strips key civil service protections from 8,000 top-level federal employees, rather than the 50,000 workers the administration projected earlier this year.

While it falls short of a wholesale remake of government, his executive order for reclassification addresses a longstanding contention by Republicans that senior non-political employees who shape policy operate with little accountability to the president—and the voters who elected him. The order strips reclassified workers of their right to appeal terminations before an independent civil service board, effectively making them at-will employees.

“It’s almost impossible to fire a federal employee, even in cases of serious misconduct,” James Sherk, a labor policy expert for the White House Domestic Policy Council, told Trump at an Oval Office signing ceremony. “As a result, you have employees who are trying to undermine the wishes of the American people by pushing their own agenda.”

Not Layoffs

Administration officials on Wednesday sought to downplay criticism that the order—creating a new employment category called Schedule Policy/Career—would give Trump authority to punish those who disagree with him. They told reporters it would not permit loyalty tests or patronage appointments and would protect whistleblowers.

It also can’t be used for mass layoffs like the ones Trump carried out at the start of his term, said Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management. Those layoffs disproportionately targeted longtime workers with advanced degrees: despite making up 26% of career federal employees at the end of 2024, more than half of the workers affected by those layoffs last year were advanced-degree holders, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis of OPM data.

“This is very much about accountability and the start of the democratic process,” Kupor said.

Critics of the policy expressed some relief at the narrowed scope, but said it left open the possibility the administration could add more positions later, including specific people it’s trying to get rid of.

“Whether it’s 8,000 or 50,000, we should interpret that as their starting place,” said Devin O’Connor, a senior adviser in the Biden White House.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, a senior administration official said there were no plans to add more positions.

About 4,000 officials across the government are politically appointed. The rest—more than 2 million—are hired on a nonpartisan basis and typically don’t turn over between administrations.

Who Gets Reclassified

The types of roles reclassified as at-will vary widely among agencies, according to a 229-page appendix published Wednesday alongside the executive order.

At the Justice Department, positions under the new job classification include non-litigating attorneys, public affairs specialists, and administrative jobs not directly involved in department prosecutions. The classification shift doesn’t affect most frontline litigators, allowing the department to insulate its remaining prosecutors and civil litigators—positions that the DOJ has struggled to recruit and retain.

At the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which encompasses the courts that adjudicate asylum claims and issue removal orders, attorney advisers who assist judges with legal research and help shape decisions will be placed under the new job classification.

The role of “deputy general counsel” at EOIR will also be reclassified, along with a number of positions in the administrative office responsible for supporting the functioning of those courts as the Trump administration moves to rapidly work through a backlog of immigration cases.

At the Environmental Protection Agency, reclassified positions include grant program specialist, senior policy adviser for appropriations, and supervisory biologist. The Department of Health and Human Services highlighted several science and medicine-based roles that differ from the positions listed for most other departments, including epidemiologists and research biologists.

And at the Food and Drug Administration, reclassifications include the staff director of the Office of Health Informatics, which helps process the influx of data the agency collects. The agency describes the office online as promoting “transparency and data-sharing.”

The White House also included some economists, such as those responsible for assessing the market effects of new food safety regulations from the Agriculture Department.

At the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, which administers the country’s largest anti-hunger program, affected job titles include analysts and nutritionists.

The overall effect for the federal government will be having fewer people offering nonpartisan, nonpolitical advice to decision-makers, former officials say.

The order “will have a chilling effect on public service,” said Peter Bonner, a federal hiring manager from the Biden administration. “Elected leaders lean on civil service to give them objective advice.”

— with assistance from Celine Castronuovo, Ben Penn, Skye Witley, Sandhya Raman, Lauren Clason, and Stephen Lee in Washington.