Updated June 3, 2026 at 2:05 PM PDT
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President Trump has issued an executive order turning an estimated 8,000 federal workers into at-will employees, which means the government could fire them without providing any reason.
The move culminates an effort Trump launched during his first term to strip vast numbers of federal employees of civil service protections designed to insulate their work from political interference.
Nearly all of the 8,000 people affected are at the highest level of the civil service, known as GS-15. The Trump administration characterizes the roles as senior positions with significant influence over policy. They include leaders of policy offices and their chiefs of staff, heads of regional offices, program managers, senior public affairs officers and those overseeing spending and grants.
The number of positions affected by Wednesday's executive order is smaller than many anticipated. Originally, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) estimated some 50,000 positions could be reclassified. The administration has not ruled out expanding the pool at a later time.
Tripling the number of at-will employees
The federal government currently has about 4,000 political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president. Until now, the rest of the workforce of approximately 2 million people could only be fired for certain reasons, such as inadequate performance or misconduct. In those situations, agencies must follow formal processes, including giving the employee an opportunity to appeal.
But in February, the administration finalized a rule creating a new category of at-will employees called Schedule Policy/Career. (During Trump's first term, it was known as Schedule F.)
It was facing multiple lawsuits even before Wednesday's order which spells out which jobs are now at-will.
"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," said Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, one of the organizations suing the Trump administration over the rule. "When government experts can be fired without cause, it's not just federal workers who are harmed — it's the people across the country who rely on these essential services every day."
"This is very much about accountability"
The notion that the federal workforce should be nonpartisan goes back 140 years.
Government jobs were once just handed out to the president's friends and supporters, a practice that led to corruption and incompetence. Then in 1881, a disgruntled and mentally ill jobseeker shot and killed President James A. Garfield, and things began to change.
Starting in the late 19th century, Congress enacted a series of laws granting federal workers job protections as a way to shield the government from corruption and provide continuity from one presidential administration to the next.
The Trump administration argues the move to Schedule P/C does not represent a return to the spoils system, noting that nothing is changing with the hiring process for those who have been reclassified.
But the administration says the status quo allows rank-and-file federal employees to thwart the president's agenda.
"This is very much about accountability," OPM Director Scott Kupor told reporters on Wednesday. "It's also about a restoration, in our mind, of the democratic process."
Given that the president is the person in the Executive Branch who is elected by the American people, the government employees who implement policy must be willing to carry out the president's directives, he explained.
"This provides a mechanism, obviously, for people in those agencies to be able to be removed effectively at will," Kupor said.
He emphasized that no loyalty tests will be used, nor will the Schedule Policy/Career employees lose their whistleblower protections. Under federal law, they also can't be fired based on political affiliation. But it would be up to agencies to enforce the law. The employees no longer have appeal rights.
The president's disregard for the laws governing the employment of federal workers has been clear in his second term. He has shown a willingness — and at times an eagerness — to fire employees he perceives as political opponents, such as Justice Department attorneys involved in Jan. 6 prosecutions, as well as those doing work he doesn't support, such as those at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
"It creates bubbles around policymakers"
The extreme politicization that Trump has already brought to government will grow worse if the president is legally able to fire tens of thousands more people for any reason, says Don Moynihan, professor at the University of Michigan's Ford School of Public Policy.
"It creates bubbles around policymakers," he says. "If you were a career civil servant and there is bad news that you want to share with the president, you're less likely to do so if you think, 'The minute I share that bad news, I'm going to get fired.'"
Moynihan says this is not an abstract idea. He points to what's happened with political appointees — who lack civil service protections — who raise the president's ire: The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency was fired after the agency issued a preliminary report last year contradicting Trump's assessment that U.S. airstrikes had "completely and totally obliterated" Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities. The commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who had previously served as a career economist in the government for more than two decades, was ridiculed and then replaced by Trump after a disappointing jobs report.
A case likely headed for the Supreme Court
Moynihan believes ongoing litigation is one reason the Trump administration has started by reclassifying only a relatively small number of positions.
"By starting with more defensible policy-making roles, they are more likely to win in court," he wrote on his blog back in February. "Once they do, and the rule is cemented as law, they can always broaden its reach, deeper and deeper into the administration."
He predicts the issue will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.
"This is a swing-for-the-fences moment on the part of the administration, where they look at this Supreme Court and think this is the most friendly court that we are going to get on this topic," he says, pointing to a number of emergency orders issued by the Supreme Court last year that have allowed controversial firings to stand while litigation continues.
The theory that the administration has pushed at the Supreme Court, which the court has been willing to entertain, is that Article II of the Constitution gives the president full control of the executive branch, including over positions that Congress designed to be insulated from White House control.
During oral arguments late last year, the conservative majority seemed open to overturning a 90-year precedent that limits the power of the president to fire heads of independent agencies, with Chief Justice John Roberts calling that precedent "a dried husk." A decision is expected soon.
A private sector comparison
Kupor, the OPM director, contends that giving the president more control over the workforce will lead to a more efficient government, pointing to how things work in the private sector, where he spent his career as a tech executive and investor.
"Outside of the federal government, all other organizations — whether for-profit or non-profit — are led by a CEO, who sets the priorities for the organization and ultimately effects those priorities through the hiring of employees who are accountable to the CEO's mission," Kupor wrote on his blog. "Everyone knows what is expected of them and is accountable to the goals of the organization."
Michael Martinez, who formerly served as OPM deputy general counsel and is now part of the legal team at Democracy Forward, says the comparison is flawed.
"It's mission-driven work in government," he says. "That's really for the American people, so that they can rely on the information they're getting" — whether it be the latest jobs numbers or the weather report.
Moynihan points to numerous studies that have found that as systems become more politicized, performance of public institutions drops.
"That's partly because people who have expertise decide, 'I'm not going to stick around if the input that I provide to policymakers is going to be ignored,'" he says.
He notes that one of the great recruiting advantages the government has historically had is the ability to tell candidates that their work will make a difference.
"But if your input and work are just being ignored, that's a much harder sales pitch to make to potential employees," he says.
Copyright 2026 NPR
