By Andrew Rice
The Center Square

The Trump administration finalized a rule on Thursday that would make it easier to fire an estimated 50,000 federal employees.

The Office of Personnel Management published its final rule Thursday to authorize that policy influencing positions be moved to Schedule Policy/Career designations, which makes them easier to eliminate.

The federal government maintains 2,252162 employees across its various agencies, according to the Department of Government Efficiency. It costs more than $211 billion in wages for these employees across the government.

“This will allow agencies to quickly remove employees from critical positions who engage in misconduct, perform poorly, or obstruct the democratic process by intentionally subverting Presidential directives,” the Office of Personnel Management wrote.

The Office of Personnel Management, the federal government’s human resources agency, said the changes were due to “longstanding performance management challenges” in the federal workforce.

Trump first instituted a similar policy in October 2020 through the creation of “Schedule F,” which would have reduced certain workforce protections for federal workers. Trump’s directive was later canceled by the Biden administration and never went into effect.

The Biden administration also established rules to make it more difficult to fire federal workers. Trump’s rule will take effect in 30 days.

Democrat lawmakers and federal union leaders have sharply criticized the Trump administration’s move and vowed legal action in response. U.S. Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., slammed the administration’s actions.

“The Trump Administration’s move to reclassify federal employees to make it easier to fire them for political reasons will hurt these workers and their families, threaten our national security, and make it harder for Americans to access the services they need,” Kaine and Warner said in a joint statement.

Federal employee unions sued the administration in January before the policy was fully developed. Democracy Forward, one of the groups behind the lawsuit, said it would resume litigation after a federal judge paused the order.

“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 Everett Kelly, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt praised the Office of Personnel Management’s rule and called for scrutiny in the federal workforce.

“This administration has been very much focused on ensuring that we have an efficient and productive workforce for the American taxpayer,” Leavitt said. “If people aren’t doing their jobs, if they aren’t showing up for work, if they’re not working hard on behalf of this president, they’re not welcome to work for him at all.”