04-18-2024
The Office of Personnel Management issued new regulations to make it harder for government officials to reclassify career civil servants into political appointees. Reclassifying these employees would make them at-will employees whom officials could more easily fire from their jobs. In 2020, President Trump created an executive order to allow the reclassification of tens of thousands of federal employees and reduce their job security protections. President Biden nullified that order when he took office. Now running for the presidency again, Trump has said he will remake the federal workforce along ideological lines should he win. Approximately 4,000 federal employees are currently considered political and change with each president.
The National Treasure Employee Union reviewed Trump's executive order. Those documents suggest that his order allowed federal workers such as office managers and specialists in human resources and cybersecurity to be reclassified as political. Biden's new rule spells out more stringent procedural requirements for reclassifying federal workers and removing civil service protections accrued by employees. In addition, the rule precludes using policymaking classifications on civil servants. While a new president could still change Biden's executive rules, the process is more complicated and cumbersome.
Some government groups, along with liberal think tanks and activists, support Biden's new rule because The Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025" places top priority on replacing existing government employees with "new, more conservative alternatives." Thus, some conservative organizations oppose the new rule. Two-thirds of the comments received by the government were positive. The new rule will take place next month.