WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is preparing to make one of the controversial personnel changes laid out in the conservative Project 2025 blueprint for his second term.
He plans to reclassify 50,000 federal employees under what’s known as Schedule F, which means they’ll have less civil service protection. The proposal follows an executive order signed at the beginning of his term, and it’s expected to be published in the Federal Register on Friday afternoon.
Trump announced the move on social media before the rule was published Friday.
“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 wrote on his Truth Social platform. “This is common sense, and will allow the federal government to finally be ‘run like a business.’”
Administration officials argue that it’s necessary to increase accountability in the workforce. The change is expected to make it easier to replace career employees who have “important policy-determining, policy-making, policy-advocating, or confidential duties,” according to a White House fact sheet. Details were first reported by Axios.
Once the rule is finalized, the president plans to sign another executive order to conclude the process.
It’s the latest step in Trump’s battle against what he describes as “the deep state,” which frustrated his goals in his first term. Now he’s moving more swiftly to fire people and reshape the government bureaucracy, steps that have alarmed labor unions and political opponents who worry about him consolidating power and violating worker rights.
The fact sheet said the plan “empowers federal agencies to swiftly remove employees in policy-influencing roles for poor performance, misconduct, corruption, or subversion of presidential directives, without lengthy procedural hurdles.”
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, criticized the move.
“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,” he said in a statement.
