President Donald Trump signed an executive order stripping civil-service job protections from about 8,000 senior federal employees, reclassifying them into a new category that allows agencies to fire them for nearly any reason and without the right to appeal.
The order moves the affected workers into a designation the administration calls “Schedule Policy/Career,” covering positions described as having a “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating” character. Almost all of the reclassified roles sit at the GS-15 level, the highest general-schedule pay grade, with some employees earning close to $200,000 a year.
The positions include directors, deputy directors, chiefs of staff, senior advisers and policy analysts, as well as employees who draft regulations and guidance, lead public and legislative affairs, and oversee the disbursement of federal grants. Under the change, those workers can be disciplined or removed without the opportunity to appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board.
The White House framed the order as a measure to increase accountability in the federal workforce. The Office of Personnel Management had previously estimated that as many as 50,000 positions could ultimately be reclassified, and officials have not ruled out expanding the pool later.
Critics, including federal employee unions and good-government groups, argue the move politicizes the civil service and could allow the firing of career officials for political reasons. Several lawsuits are challenging the reclassification, setting up a fight likely to play out in the courts.
