The Trump administration has created a new category of federal workers that will make it easier to fire about 50,000 senior career employees.
A final rule issued on Thursday by the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees the federal workforce, allows agencies to reclassify employees in policy-influencing roles into a new category called Schedule Policy/Career, which are at-will positions that do not offer the strong job protection long enjoyed by career workers.
“Agency supervisors report great difficulty removing employees for poor performance or misconduct,” the 255-page rule reads. “This will allow agencies to quickly remove employees from critical positions who engage in misconduct, perform poorly, or obstruct the democratic process by intentionally subverting presidential directives.”
The new rule is rooted in an executive order President Donald Trump signed in January 2025 targeting “policy-influencing positions” in the federal workforce. Trump signed a similar order near the end of his first administration, but it was later reversed by Joe Biden.
A broad coalition of unions and organizations advocating for federal workers, represented by Democracy Forward, has already said it will challenge the new rule in court.
“This is a deliberate attempt to do through regulation what the law does not allow—strip public servants of their rights and make it easier to fire them for political reasons and harm the American people through doing so,” Democracy Forward chief Skye Perryman said in a statement.
The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, blasted the new rule as “a direct assault on a professional, nonpartisan, merit-based civil service.” The group previously sued the Trump administration over a “loyalty test” added to job applications.
OPM Director Scott Kupor told the Wall Street Journal that “people can’t be conscientious objectors in the workforce in a way where it interferes with their ability to carry out their mission.”
“When conscientious objection becomes sabotage or trying to find ways to thwart the objectives of the administration, that is not allowed,” he said. OPM officials told the outlet that the administration won’t discipline federal workers based on their political affiliation, and that the new rule won’t be used to justify mass layoffs.
The White House stood by the OPM.
“I think it’s a good thing that the Office of Personnel Management put this rule out,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Thursday. “I think if people aren’t doing their jobs, if they aren’t showing up for work, if they’re not working hard on behalf of this president, they’re not welcome to work for him at all.”
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