"President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday stripping job security from nearly 8,000 federal positions, expanding his authority to fire career employees who work on policy matters and accelerating a civil-service overhaul that’s drawn legal and political pushback.
The move was more restrained than expected. The Office of Personnel Management had initially estimated the new job classification could apply to as many as 50,000 federal employees. Still, the directive will transform the upper echelons of the civil service, allowing the president to fire at will staffers who fail to implement and advocate for his policies.
Trump has argued the move is necessary to make the bureaucracy more responsive to elected leadership, contending that civil-service protections allowed what he calls a “deep state” to resist his agenda. Opponents counter that the approach erodes the independence of a professional federal workforce.
The executive order follows a year of groundwork laid by the Trump administration to create rules around the new job classification, known as Schedule Policy/Career. Under regulations from OPM finalized in early February, employees moved into that category lose many of the procedural protections most federal workers have, including the right to appeal their removal to an independent body."
Gregory Korte reports for Bloomberg Environment June 3, 2026.
