Trump signs executive order aimed at weakening federal employee protections

President Donald Trump wasted no time signing an executive order Monday that aims to give him more control over the federal workforce – whom he has long vilified as the “deep state.”

President Donald Trump wasted no time signing an executive order Monday that aims to give him more control over the federal workforce – whom he has long vilified as the “deep state.” The order, in a highly unusual move, seeks to wipe away a rule former President Joe Biden put in place last year and is expected to face multiple legal challenges. The new order revives an executive order Trump signed shortly before the 2020 election that created a category for federal employees involved in policy – known as Schedule F – that would make those workers easier to fire. Biden had quickly reversed that order and then last year finalized a new rule that further bolstered protections for career federal workers. However, Trump’s latest executive order directs the Office of Personnel Management to rescind any changes made by the rule that would impede or affect the implementation of Trump’s 2025 directive. Trump also revoked his predecessor’s 2021 executive order that rescinded the original Schedule F order, a more conventional move. Like the 2020 executive order, Trump’s new directive is expected to swiftly wind up in court. Traditionally, undoing or revising a rule requires a new rule, a process that can take months, and cannot be done by executive order, experts said. Trump’s 2020 order left many federal employees fearing for their jobs. It would have given him and his agency appointees more leeway in the hiring and firing of federal staffers deemed disloyal, a move that critics say politicizes civil service and could lead to career officials being pushed out for political reasons and replaced with those committed to the president.