Federal Workers Sue Trump Over Attempt to Create 'Army of Sycophants'

A union representing workers across dozens of federal agencies sued the Trump administration late Monday over an executive order stripping many career civil servants of protections designed to insulate them from political pressure.

The lawsuit was filed by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) shortly after President Donald Trump signed an order that reinstated, with some amendments, the "Schedule F" measure he implemented at the tail end of his first White House term—an action that former President Joe Biden reversed.

On Monday, Trump rescinded Biden's order and signed a new one declaring that "any power" federal employees have "is delegated by the president, and they must be accountable to the president." Trump also moved to reverse a Biden administration rule that bolstered protections for career federal workers.

Referring to the new order during a post-inauguration event, Trump said that "we're getting rid of all of the cancer, the cancer caused by the Biden administration."

NTEU national president Doreen Greenwald in a statement that "this order is about administering political loyalty tests to everyday employees in the federal workforce who took an oath to uphold the Constitution and serve their country."

"Trump's order is a blatant attempt to corrupt the federal government by eliminating employees' due process rights so they can be fired for political reasons."

Restoring Schedule F—which reclassified tens of thousands of federal workers as political appointees, making them easier to terminate—was one of the policy priorities laid out in the Project 2025 agenda crafted by dozens of officials from Trump's first administration. Analysts have argued that Schedule F is illegal.

Vox's Zack Beauchamp warned that "in theory," Trump's restoration of Schedule F "could be as damaging to democracy as the birthright citizenship order—if not more so."

"Schedule F in its original form applied, per some estimates, to somewhere around 50,000 civil servants (and potentially quite a lot more)," Beauchamp noted. "Purging that many people and allowing Trump to replace them with cronies would be a powerful tool for turning the federal government into an extension of his will."

Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement Monday that "Trump's order is a blatant attempt to corrupt the federal government by eliminating employees' due process rights so they can be fired for political reasons."

"This unprecedented assertion of executive power will create an army of sycophants beholden only to Donald Trump, not the Constitution or the American people," Kelley added. "The integrity of the entire federal government could be irreparably harmed if this is not stopped."