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Unions Condemn Executive Order Allowing Trump to Replace Federal Workers With 'Political Loyalists'
The head of America's largest federal workers union called it "a blatant attempt to corrupt the federal government by eliminating employees’ due process rights so they can be fired for political reasons."
Jun 05, 2026
Labor unions are warning that an executive order signed this week by President Donald Trump will allow his administration to replace thousands of career civil servants with "political loyalists."
The order, signed on Wednesday, converts around 8,000 federal workers—most of whom are at senior levels in the civil service with major influence over policy decisions—to Schedule Policy/Career (P/C) status, formerly known as Schedule F, effectively making them "at-will" employees whom the president can fire at his discretion.
While a small number, around 4,000, of the roughly 2 million federal workers are considered political appointees, most federal employees cannot be removed purely for failing to serve the agenda of the president and can usually only be fired for issues like inadequate performance or misconduct, which involves an appeal process.
But as part of the Trump administration's effort to dismantle what it's described as a "deep state" of disloyal bureaucrats, a major objective of the Heritage Foundation's right-wing manifesto Project 2025, those 8,000 employees may now be fired for "subversion of presidential directives."
According to the US Office of Personnel Management, this could be just the beginning—with as many as 50,000 employees potentially in consideration to be rescheduled.
A fact sheet released by the White House said that despite the reclassification, “these remain ‘career’ positions and the non-partisan hiring processes, competitive status, and other aspects of these roles will not change,” while “removal decisions will also be made without respect to political affiliation.”
But Trump-loyal department heads—everywhere from the Department of Justice to the Pentagon—have systematically purged employees across executive departments that are perceived as Trump's political enemies.
AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said on Thursday that "Schedule P/C is the next phase in Trump’s anti-worker agenda to replace government workers with political loyalists who answer only to him."
"As we’ve seen from his first day in office, the president is determined to tear down the architecture of our federal government and replace it with a system of corruption to benefit powerful CEOs and billionaire union-busters," she said.
It's part of a broader attack on the federal workforce in Trump's second term. Through a combination of firings, layoffs, and forced resignations, he has reduced the number of government employees by nearly 300,000, causing chaos and understaffing at many agencies. He's also stripped more than 1 million unionized federal workers of their right to collective bargaining, though courts have blocked the implementation for some workers.
Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents more than 800,000 federal workers, said Wednesday's order was "a blatant attempt to corrupt the federal government by eliminating employees’ due process rights so they can be fired for political reasons."
"The practical implications of this action are clear. Workers who once felt comfortable reporting waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement at their place of employment because they were protected from retaliation will now be afraid for their jobs if they speak out," he said. "That is a disservice to them and to the millions of Americans who rely on the federal government every day."
William Shackelford, president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, added that the order "threatens expanded political cronyism, increasing the risk that executive actions will be decided by the size of political contributions rather than the faithful execution of the law."
"That increases the risk of politically motivated enforcement of laws, threatening individual liberty; politically determined tariff exceptions and contract and grant awards, threatening greater corruption and waste of taxpayer dollars; and politically selective provision of services, threatening failure of government operations for disfavored groups or localities," he said.
The legal watchdog Democracy Forward has filed a lawsuit against Trump's rebranding of Schedule F as Schedule P/C at the start of his second term, which the group argued allowed several positions in the traditional nonpartisan civil service to be effectively recast as political appointees.
"For generations, our country has relied on a professional, nonpartisan civil service," said Skye Perryman, the group's president and CEO on Wednesday. "The people responsible for protecting our public health, safeguarding our environment, delivering our mail, managing our airports, protecting our public lands, and enforcing our laws should be allowed to do their jobs, not targeted by the same government they serve."
“When government experts can be fired without cause,” she added, “it’s not just federal workers who are harmed—it’s the people across the country who rely on these essential services every day.”
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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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Trump Advances Plan to Fill Federal Government With 'Political Cronies'
"Anyone who cares about our national security, or receives Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid... has a vested interest in protecting our merit-based federal workforce."
Apr 19, 2025
The largest federal labor union in the U.S. said Friday that tens of thousands of federal workers could soon "have their jobs politicized" and be swiftly fired under a new rule proposed by the Office of Personnel Management.
Under the rule, an estimated 50,000 career civil servants would be reclassified as "at-will" employees, removing civil service protections and making it easier for the federal government to dismiss them.
President Donald Trump and his billionaire ally, tech mogul Elon Musk, have long claimed the federal workforce is rife with "rogue bureaucrats" and is part of the "deep state," pledging to dismantle the civil service.
Trump said on his social media platform, Truth Social, that reclassifying workers "will allow the federal government to finally be 'run like a business.'"
"If these government workers refuse to advance the policy interests of the president, or are engaging in corrupt behavior, they should no longer have a job," he said.
"President Trump's action to politicize the work of tens of thousands of career federal employees will erode the government's merit-based hiring system and undermine the professional civil service that Americans rely on."
Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), said Friday's announcement was the latest "in a series of deliberate moves by this administration to corrupt the federal government and replace qualified public servants with political cronies."
"President Trump's action to politicize the work of tens of thousands of career federal employees will erode the government's merit-based hiring system and undermine the professional civil service that Americans rely on," said Kelley. "Politicizing the career civil service is a threat to our democracy and to the integrity of all the programs and services Americans rely on."
The new category for civil servants was originally called Schedule F, but the White House said it was changing the classification to "Schedule Policy/Career."
U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner and Rep. Gerry Connolly, all Democrats from Virginia whose constituents include many federal employees, said Saturday that Trump's proposal to "hire and fire these workers based on their politics, not their qualifications... makes us all less safe."
The lawmakers have all backed legislation to protect the federal civil service from being reclassified outside of merit system principles without the approval of Congress, and issued a warning to congressional Republicans who have heard from angry constituents in recent weeks about the administration's spending cuts through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
"Anyone who cares about our national security, or receives Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or any other critical service administered by the federal government, has a vested interest in protecting our merit-based federal workforce," said the lawmakers. "We have long fought for legislation to protect the federal workforce from this kind of attack. To our colleagues who will hear from their constituents if government services continue to decline because of this decision: You were warned."
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