Office of Personnel Management adopts rule to boost protections for government employees.
The Biden administration issued a new rule that makes it harder to fire government employees in an apparent attempt to thwart former President Donald Trump’s pledge to fire “rogue bureaucrats” and Deep State actors.
After issuing the 240-page rule this week, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in a statement Thursday hinted that the move was meant to counter Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp and root out the deep state.”
“In the first week of the Biden-Harris Administration, President Biden revoked an Executive Order issued by the previous Administration that risked altering our country’s long-standing merit-based civil service system, by creating new excepted service schedule, known as ‘Schedule F,’ and directing agencies to move potentially large swathes of career employees into this new excepted service status,” the OPM stated.
OPM just finalized a regulation upholding civil service protections for most of the country’s 2.2 million federal employees. Federal employees should be hired based on their skills & expertise – not on political considerations.
Learn more here:https://t.co/vVULOTfBWH
— U.S. Office of Personnel Management (@USOPM) April 4, 2024
“Schedule F” refers to a Trump-era executive order from 2020 that allowed tens of thousands of the 2.2 million federal employees to be reclassified as political appointees, making it easier to fire them.
Joe Biden rescinded the executive order when he captured the White House, but Trump in 2022 pledged that he would revive the order in some form.
“We need to make it much easier to fire rogue bureaucrats who are deliberately undermining democracy or at a minimum just want to keep their jobs,” Trump said in a speech at the America First Policy Institute on July 26, 2022, promising to “drain the swamp and root out the deep state.”
President Trump on deconstruction of the Administrative State:
“We need to make it much easier to fire rogue bureaucrats who are deliberately undermining democracy.” pic.twitter.com/TiKyBJL67a
— Wojciech Pawelczyk (@WojPawelczyk) July 26, 2022
“Congress should pass historic reforms empowering the president to ensure that any bureaucrat who is corrupt, incompetent, or unnecessary for the job can be told – have you ever heard this – you’re fired! Get out!” he added.
The new rule is set to take effect next month.
“This final rule honors our 2.2 million career civil servants, helping ensure that people are hired and fired based on merit and that they can carry out their duties based on their expertise and not political loyalty,” OPM Director Kiran Ahuja said in a statement.
“The Biden-Harris Administration is deeply committed to the federal workforce, as these professionals are vital to our national security, our health, our economic prosperity, and much more,” Ahuja added.
As we’ve reported, the Biden government has been taking desperate measures to hamstring Trump should be retake office in November.
For example, Democrat lawmakers, advocacy groups, and former government officials have been “quietly devising plans” to stop former President Donald Trump from exercising control over the military if he once again becomes the Commander-in-Chief.
And the U.S. and other Western countries are considering transferring a U.S.-led multinational group that coordinates the shipment of weapons to Ukraine to NATO to maintain the flow of arms to Kyiv in spite of a second Trump presidency, though the White House has since pushed back against those reports.
