President Donald Trump’s administration is moving forward with a new rule “that will make it easier to remove federal employees it believes are undercutting President Trump's agenda,” according to a report from Axios.
Known as "Schedule F," about 50,000 people, or 2 percent of the federal workforce, will be stripped of their civil service protections. “Trump is continuing his far-reaching effort to trim the federal bureaucracy and make it more answerable to him,” Senior Political Reporter Alex Isenstadt wrote.
The administration believes this will give them “greater flexibility to fire civil servants who are underperforming, engaging in misconduct or undermining Trump's policy plans.”
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A White House official told Axios, these federal employees "are making decisions, and those decisions should be in line with the president's agenda. Unelected career bureaucrats should be held accountable to the agenda Americans vote for.”
However, the outlet notes labor groups have been given “aggressive pushback” against this new rule. “The American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) filed a lawsuit against the administration in February, alleging that it overstepped its authority in reversing Biden's regulation protecting civil servants,” Isenstadt penned.
"Schedule F is a shameless attempt to politicize the federal workforce by replacing thousands of dedicated, qualified civil servants with political cronies," AFSCME President Lee Saunders told the outlet in February.
According to Axios, “Civil servants in nonpartisan roles traditionally have had job protections that shielded them from the political whims of whoever was in the White House.”
Two White House Officials told the outlet, the new rule will impact workers who are “involved in policymaking.”
Axios underscored the “big picture” is “The wave of firings expected to be the fallout from the successor to Schedule F comes as the administration, largely through Elon Musk's DOGE team, continues to make huge cuts in government personnel and funding.”