Trump is trying to make government workers more like those in Corporate America: Easier to fire

Business Insider

28-05-2025

President Donald Trump has issued a blitz of executive orders, many of which have been challenged in court.
President Donald Trump has issued a blitz of executive orders, many of which have been challenged in court. ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP
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The Trump administration is trying to revive a measure that would make government workers who currently enjoy strong civil-service employment protections more like those in Corporate America: easily fireable.
For now, many federal workers can't be fired for their political affiliations and can only be fired for a justifiable cause. Trump's move would change that by classifying them as employees who determine or make policy. They could, therefore, be fired for any legal reason with little to no notice.
"This will allow agencies to quickly remove employees from critical positions who engage in misconduct, perform poorly, or undermine the democratic process by intentionally subverting Presidential directives," says the proposed Office of Personnel Management rule, which was introduced in a different iteration during Trump's first term and revived through an executive order this year. It is now open for comment until June 7.
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The move would ease the way for additional cuts to the federal workforce after the Trump administration's first major round of federal firings in February faced legal challenges and resulted in many workers getting reinstated.
"I do expect to be Schedule F at some point. Personally, it's totally bullshit," a current Social Security Administration manager said. "This gets into the whole history of the civil service and the politicization of civil service, and whether as a public policy you think that's a smart idea or not; I do not."
From career civil servant to policymaker
Some advocates for changing civil service status have pointed toward reducing administrative bloat, or federal bureaucrats wielding too much power. Two Republicans — Senators Eric Schmitt and Rick Scott — introduced a bill in 2023 that would make all executive branch workers at-will, saying that the current system disincentivizes efficiency while rewarding mediocrity.
"President Trump was overwhelmingly elected in November to shake up Washington—and that starts with holding unelected government bureaucrats accountable," Schmitt said in a statement to BI.
Similarly, the House-passed iteration of what Trump called his "big beautiful bill" would offer federal workers the option of opting in to at-will employment in exchange for having to pay less into retirement funds.
At-will federal employees would function more like political appointees, who typically turn over when a new presidential administration takes office. Career civil servants, on the other hand, who do things like man Social Security phone lines or work IT for government websites, have certain protections so they can carry on with their work, regardless of which political party is in charge.
The proposed rule has garnered over 16,000 comments, and the comment period has been extended by two weeks. For context, Webb Lyons, the former general counsel at OPM during the Biden-Harris administration, said that a Biden-era rule on civil service protections garnered 4,000 comments — "by far the most comments that we received on any regulation while I was at OPM for almost four years," he said.
Next, the agency will review comments and finalize the rule. If it resembles the current proposal, it could represent a seismic shift.
"This would be an unprecedented rollback of protections that were intended to ensure a non-partisan civil service can balance those interests of the President with their duty to uphold the Constitution and follow the law," Devin O'Connor, a senior fellow at CBPP and former White House Senior Advisor, said.
A glimpse into what that could mean for the Social Security Administration
There's already been a sneak peek into what the new classification, called "Schedule Policy/Career," would look like at the Social Security Administration. A mid-April memo seen by Business Insider from the previous acting commissioner at the SSA, Leland Dudek, outlined plans to reclassify large swaths of the agency's workers as Schedule P/C.
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The left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said the order would cover around 10,000 positions across the agency, including workers in roles like evaluating disability benefits applications and maintaining information technology. As of 2024, CBPP said, around 19 positions were classified as political appointees at SSA.
"With Social Security, the sort of unofficial mission that people talk about every day is get the right check to the right person at the right time. That's a very apolitical job," Kathleen Romig, the director of Social Security and disability policy at CBPP and an SSA alum, said. Romig said that the proposed changes across SSA are a "broad brush."
There's also the question of whether a mass reclassification could face an uphill legal battle: A brief from Elisa Walker, a senior fellow at the National Academy of Social Insurance and an SSA alum, found that the reclassifications may run afoul of a provision in the Social Security Act that stipulates the agency can have no more than 20 full-time roles that are policy-making.
"Congress specifically built in these kinds of protections to keep the agency by and large nonpolitical. I think that context is really important," Walker said. "That is exactly why they wrote this provision — to prevent this kind of short-term politicization of the agency."
The Social Security administration said in a comment that it is "committed to protecting Social Security and eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse in the federal government."
"Some in the media have erroneously reported that SSA's optimization effort includes terminating employees in non-mission critical positions," the agency said. "However, this is not true. In fact, the number of SSA employees involuntarily removed from federal service so far this fiscal year amounts to one-tenth of one percent of our total employees."
Romig said the threat of getting fired or having to toe the party line could also impact how SSA employees approach their work or how safe they feel expressing their views.
One SSA worker who's been with the agency for 30 years echoed that concern: "I think everyone realizes that that means that since you are a political appointee, you could also just be let go with little or no protection or ability to fight against that. So one misstep and you could be gone."
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