CNN
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President Donald Trump wasted no time Monday, signing an executive order aimed at tightening his control over federal officials, which he has long derided as the “deep state.”
The order is a highly unusual move aimed at sweeping away rules enacted last year by former President Joe Biden and is expected to face multiple legal challenges.
The new order reinstates an executive order signed by President Trump just before the 2020 election that created a category called “Schedule F” to make it easier to fire federal employees involved in the policy. . Biden quickly reversed that order and last year finalized new rules that further strengthen protections for career federal workers.
However, President Trump’s latest executive order directs the Office of Personnel Management to rescind any rule changes that would impede or impact implementation of President Trump’s 2025 directive. President Trump also rescinded his predecessor’s 2021 executive order that rescinded the original Schedule F order and replaced it with a more conventional measure.
Like his 2020 executive order, President Trump’s new directive is expected to be brought quickly to court. Traditionally, repealing or amending rules requires new rules, a process that can take months and cannot be done by executive order, experts said.
President Trump’s 2020 order left many federal employees fearing they would lose their jobs. That would have given him and his agency appointees more latitude in hiring and firing federal employees deemed disloyal, but the measure politicizes the civil service and is a career move. Critics say staffers could be removed for political reasons and replaced with staffers devoted to the president. .
Joe Spielberger, senior policy adviser at the Government Oversight Project, a watchdog group, said that would strip federal employees of due process protections and the ability to appeal to other independent agencies. Initial estimates suggested the measures would have affected about 50,000 workers, but experts believe many more workers may have been affected.
“President Trump’s order corrupts the federal government by stripping employees of their due process rights so they can be fired for political reasons,” said Everett Kelly, national president of the American Federation of Public Employees, which represents 750,000 workers. “It’s a blatant attempt to do that,” he told CNN. of a new order. “It would take hundreds of thousands of federal jobs away from nonpartisan, professional civil servants and make them accountable to the will of a single person.”
Meanwhile, the Treasury Employees Union has vowed to “fight” President Trump’s civil service reform efforts.
“Americans deserve a government provided by nonpartisan professionals who are qualified to do their jobs, regardless of which party occupies the White House,” Doreen Greenwald, the union’s national president, said in a statement. NTEU will fight to protect that tradition.” .
President Trump’s new effort to reorganize the federal government and federal workforce is an effort to avoid hurdles he felt hindered his ability to get important initiatives across the finish line during his first term. It aims to ensure loyalty to its policies.
“Accountability is essential for all federal employees,” he wrote in Monday’s executive order.
“Any authority they have is delegated to them by the president, and they are accountable to the president, who is the only member of the executive branch…But there have been numerous instances in recent years of resistance by career federal employees. is well documented and undermines the policies and directives of the executive leadership,” the order reads.
But critics say the bill would take the country back 140 years, to a time when elected officials hired political allies for government jobs.
Any effort to undermine the apolitical, meritocratic civil service is a “mistake” that undermines the federal government’s ability to deliver positive outcomes for Americans, said Max Martin of the Partnership for Public Service. CEO Steer told CNN.
Even if it does not lead to a wave of layoffs, this executive order gives some federal employees the ability to challenge directives that may be deemed illegal, unethical, or contrary to professional standards. Spielberger said it would encourage people to reconsider.
“The goal is to create this massive chilling effect across the federal government, where people are kind of pre-scared and just comply,” he said.
Correction: This article has been updated to reflect President Donald Trump’s latest directive in 2025.
