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office of personnel management
New Project 2025-Backed Trump Rule Guts Protections for 50,000 Federal Workers
“This rule is a direct assault on a professional, nonpartisan, merit-based civil service and the government services the American people rely on every day," said one critic.
Feb 05, 2026
The Trump administration on Thursday finalized a major civil service rule change that makes it easier to fire certain federal employees and replace them with political loyalists—a move that critics say increases the likelihood of abuse of power.
The new policy at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)—the federal government's independent central human resources agency—reclassifies tens of thousands of federal workers as "policy/career," making them effectively at-will employees and easier to terminate.
The policy, known as Schedule F, was first proposed by President Donald Trump during his first term, which expired before he could fully implement it. Former President Joe Biden rescinded the policy, but Trump revived it on his first day back in office in January 2025, despite warnings from experts who say it is illegal.
Schedule F is one of the policies recommended in Project 2025, the far-right initiative to boost the power of the presidency and purge the federal civil service.
OPM estimates that around 2% of the federal workforce, or approximately 50,000 employees, will be affected by the rule change, which the agency said is aimed at "strengthening accountability, improving performance, and reinforcing a merit-based federal workforce."
Scott Kupor, who heads the OPM, said in a statement that the rule change “restores a basic principle of democratic governance: Those entrusted with shaping and executing policy must be accountable for results.”
“This rule preserves merit-based hiring, veterans’ preference, and whistle-blower protections while ensuring senior career officials responsible for advancing President Trump’s agenda can be held to the same performance expectations that exist throughout much of the American work force," he added.
However, critics are sounding the alarm over parts of the new policy, including a provision allowing agencies to fire employees who "obstruct the democratic process by intentionally subverting presidential directives."
“This rule is a direct assault on a professional, nonpartisan, merit-based civil service and the government services the American people rely on every day,” American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) national president Everett Kelley said in a statement.
“When people see turmoil and controversy in Washington, they don’t ask for more politics in government, they ask for competence and professionalism," Kelley continued. "OPM is doing the opposite. They’re rebranding career public servants as ‘policy’ employees, silencing whistleblowers, and replacing competent professionals with political flunkies without any neutral, independent protections against politicization and arbitrary abuse of power.”
“A professional civil service means nurses and doctors can advocate for patient safety, inspectors can report violations, cybersecurity experts can warn about threats, and benefits specialists can tell the truth about what it takes to deliver services—without worrying they’ll be punished for it,” Kelley argued.
“Turning tens or maybe hundreds thousands of these professionals into at-will employees doesn’t make government more accountable," he added. "It makes it more vulnerable to pressure, retaliation, and political interference, which is exactly the opposite of what the public is asking for right now.”
Democracy Forward, which represents AFGE and another public sector union in a lawsuit challenging Trump's revival of Schedule F, said in a statement Thursday, "The final rule continues to weaken more than a century of bipartisan civil service protections by allowing the administration to remove experienced, nonpolitical federal employees at will while stripping away civil service protections, meaningful oversight, and appeal rights."
"Existing law already provides mechanisms to address employee misconduct," the group added. "This rule is not about accountability, but about politicization."
The Trump-Vance admin is choosing to ignore countless concerns from the American public in order to implement a cornerstone of Project 2025 – an unlawful effort to weaken and politicize the nonpartisan civil service through regulation. To that we say: we will see you in court.
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— Democracy Forward (@democracyforward.org) February 5, 2026 at 7:06 AM
Democracy Forward president and CEO Skye Perryman said that "this proposal was wrong when it was outlined in Project 2025, wrong when the president issued an executive order, and it remains wrong now... This is a deliberate attempt to do through regulation what the law does not allow—strip public servants of their rights and make it easier to fire them for political reasons and harm the American people through doing so."
"We have successfully fought this kind of power grab before, and we will fight this again," Perryman vowed. "We will return to court to stop this unlawful rule and will use every legal tool available to hold this administration accountable to the people.”
On the legislative front, US Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and the late Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-Va.) last year reintroduced the Save the Civil Service Act, which aims "to protect the federal workforce from politicization and political manipulation."
“The civil servants who make up our federal workforce are the engine that keeps our federal government running,” Connolly, who died last May of cancer, said at the time. “They are our country’s greatest asset. We rely on their experience and expertise to provide every basic government service—from delivering the mail to helping families in the wake of natural disasters."
Connolly added that Trump's push to "remove qualified experts and replace them with political loyalists is a direct threat to our national security and our government’s ability to function the way the American people expect it to."
"It threatens to create a system wherein benefits and services are delivered based on the politics, not the needs, of the recipient," he added. "Expertise, not political fealty, must define our civil service.”
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Unions Sue to Protect Federal Workers From Mass Firings During Government Shutdown
"If these mass firings take place, the people who keep our skies safe for travel, our food supply secure, and our communities protected will lose their jobs," one labor leader warned.
Sep 30, 2025
Just hours before an expected US government shutdown, two major unions for federal workers filed a lawsuit on Tuesday in hopes of protecting them from the Trump administration's threat of mass firings.
"Announcing plans to fire potentially tens of thousands of federal employees simply because Congress and the administration are at odds on funding the government past the end of the fiscal year is not only illegal—it's immoral and unconscionable," American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) national president Everett Kelley said in a statement.
"Federal employees dedicate their careers to public service—more than a third are military veterans—and the contempt being shown them by this administration is appalling," Kelley declared.
Filed by AFGE and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) in the Northern District of California, the new suit specifically takes aim at the Office of Management and Budget, OMB Director Russell Vought, the Office of Personnel Management, and OPM Director Scott Kupor.
"Federal workers do the work of the people, and playing games with their livelihoods is cruel and unlawful."
The OMB last week "issued a memorandum threatening that if 'congressional Democrats' do not agree to the administration's
demands, and the federal government shuts down, there will be mass firings of federal employees," the complaint explains. The memo "takes the legally unsupportable position that a temporary interruption of appropriations eliminates the statutory requirement for all unfunded government programs and directs all federal agencies to 'use this opportunity' to consider reductions in force (RIFs) for any programs for which the funding has lapsed and that are not priorities of the president."
"This past weekend, the Trump administration doubled down on its illegal activity," the complaint notes, as OMB and OPM "told agencies that federal employees could work during the shutdown in order to effectuate these RIFs. But this directive is contrary to federal law, because carrying out RIFs is plainly not a permitted (or 'excepted') function that can lawfully continue during a shutdown."
"The threat of massive layoffs was repeated and reinforced yesterday by the White House press secretary who, when asked whether there will be mass layoffs of federal employees, answered, 'There will be if Democrats don't keep the government open,'" the filing continues. "These actions are contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious, and the cynical use of federal employees as a pawn in congressional deliberations should be declared unlawful and enjoined by this court."
AFSCME president Lee Saunders highlighted how the firing threat connects to Project 2025, a policy agenda from a host of far-right figures, including Vought, published last year, in the lead-up to the November election.
"The Trump administration is once again breaking the law to push its extreme Project 2025 agenda, illegally targeting federal workers with threats of mass firings due to the federal government shutdown," Saunders said. "If these mass firings take place, the people who keep our skies safe for travel, our food supply secure, and our communities protected will lose their jobs. We will do everything possible to defend these AFSCME members and their fellow workers from an administration hell-bent on stripping away their collective bargaining rights and jobs."
AFSCME and AFGE are represented by Altshuler Berzon LLP, Democracy Defenders Fund, and Democracy Forward, whose president and CEO, Skye Perryman, accused President Donald Trump of "using the civil service as a bargaining chip as he marches the American people into a government shutdown."
"Federal workers do the work of the people, and playing games with their livelihoods is cruel and unlawful. That is why we have sued today," said Perryman, whose group has played a leading role in challenging the administration in court, as an increasingly authoritarian Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency have worked to gut the federal bureaucracy.
"Since inauguration, this administration has pursued a harmful Project 2025 agenda, attacking community programs and charities, lawyers, schools, private companies, law firms, judges, universities, public servants, and the programs, foundations, and civil servants working to deliver services to people and keep communities safe," she noted. "No one's lives have been made easier or better by these actions, and we will continue to meet these attacks in court. We are honored to again represent AFGE and AFSCME in protecting the American people from the Trump-Vance administration's callous and unlawful agenda."
The government will shut down at midnight unless Congress takes action. Although the GOP controls both chambers and the White House, they lack the numbers to advance most legislation in the Senate without Democratic support. The Senate voted Tuesday evening on Democrats' and Republicans' competing resolutions, neither of which passed.
Democrats have fought to expand Affordable Care Act subsidies and reverse cuts to Medicaid in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act that congressional Republicans passed and Trump signed this summer. GOP leaders have refused to consider walking back their assault on the healthcare of millions of Americans.
In the event of a shutdown, "non-expected" employees are furloughed while "excepted" employees continue working, but no one gets paid until the shutdown ends.
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Christian Nationalism for Lunch? Thanks, But No Thanks
A new U.S. Office of Personnel Management memo allowing workplace proselytizing is not a great recipe for harmonious and productive coworker relations.
Aug 13, 2025
Imagine you’re a federal civil service employee, reading today’s paper while having a sandwich during your lunch break in the cafeteria. Another federal employee, maybe a coworker or maybe not, sits down beside you and politely begins to tell you why his faith is correct and why yours, actually, isn’t. Sounds annoying, possibly enraging, and presumably inappropriate if not prohibited? Think again.
According to a July 28, 2025 memorandum to the heads of all federal departments and agencies from Scott Kupor, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), employees “attempting to persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views,” including “why the non-adherent should re-think his religious beliefs,” is perfectly okay and even protected religious expression, so long as it falls short of harassment.
As a former federal attorney who worked for the U.S. Labor Department for 39 years, including eight years as a senior executive who ran a regional office, I find this policy disconcerting at best. From the standpoint of office mission effectiveness, maintaining positive and respectful peer-to-peer relationships is crucial. It’s one thing for coworkers, during breaks, to have candid and even heated discussions about sitcoms, musical tastes, or even politics. It’s quite another to laud one’s own spiritual belief and disparage, if not outright insult, another’s. Not a great recipe for harmonious and productive coworker relations.
This right to attempt to convince others that their religious convictions are misguided extends not only to peer coworkers, but to supervisors too. In other words, as you’re enjoying your sandwich in the cafeteria, your supervisor could sit down next to you and explain why your deeply held beliefs happen to be wrong. Not quite so easy to tell them it’s none of their damn business.
The prospect of federal supervisors advising their subordinates that their religious convictions aren’t the “correct” ones becomes dramatically more troubling if supervisors’ tenure is subject to the president’s whims.
But there’s another aspect of this policy that casts an even darker shadow. All this arises in an administration fueled by U.S. President Donald Trump’s vow to “bring back Christianity,” and populated or supported by self-described Christian nationalists like House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Russell Vought, once again head of the powerful Office of Management and Budget.
Christian nationalism means different things to different people, but has a number of core beliefs. A major 2024 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute included five statements designed to measure support for Christian nationalism. The list included:
- God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.
- The U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation.
- Being Christian is an important part of being truly American.
- If the U.S. moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore.
- U.S. laws should be based on Christian values.
The study found that 30% of Americans can be classified as Christian nationalism “adherents” or “sympathizers” (those who fully or mostly agree with the five statements), compared to two-thirds of Americans found to be “skeptics” or “rejecters” (that is, they mostly or fully disagree with the statements). Nevertheless, according to preelection reporting by Politico, “Vought and his ideological brethren would not shy from using their administration positions to promote Christian doctrine and imbue public policy with it.”
According to Christian nationalism expert and history professor Kristin Du Mez, “This is not a pluralist vision for all of America coming together or a vision for compromise… It is a vision for seizing power and using that power to usher in a ‘Christian America.’” She believes that if the Christian nationalist movement gets what it wants, “There will be no meaningful religious liberty. There will be essentially a two-tier society between the quote unquote, real Americans—those who buy into this, or pretend to—and then the rest of Americans.”
Is this latest OPM memo part of a veiled effort to advance a Christian nationalist vision for our country? Consider that the prospect of federal supervisors advising their subordinates that their religious convictions aren’t the “correct” ones becomes dramatically more troubling if supervisors’ tenure is subject to the president’s whims—including, potentially, loyalty to a Vought-endorsed Christian-nationalist-inspired belief system. During Trump’s first term, Vought tried to reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers as political appointees, which would have enabled mass dismissals of those deemed unsuitable. A similar effort is underway this time around. Will espousing Christian nationalism be one of the unstated litmus tests to get, or keep, a supervisory job?
Whether there’s a Christian nationalist agenda lurking behind the OPM memo or not, a better policy for government workers would suggest, if not require, that unless asked, they—and particularly supervisors—keep their judgments of others’ personal belief systems to themselves.
But since the July 28 memo says otherwise, federal employees, please note: As you’re minding your own business munching a tuna salad sandwich at lunch, you might find your supervisor offering a spiritual lesson that wasn’t on the menu. If it works for you, fine. But if it doesn’t go down well, do send it back, with a polite but firm “no thank you.” Assert your freedom of religion, or your freedom not to be religious, while you still have it.
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