President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that strips civil service job protections from approximately 8,000 senior federal employees, the White House and the Office of Personnel Management said in announcing the move. The order targets workers earning up to nearly $200,000 a year who are deemed to be “influencing” government policy, reclassifying them as at-will employees who can be terminated without cause.
Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees the government’s human resources policies, said in a call previewing the order that the administration needs employees willing and able to carry out lawful orders to achieve its policy priorities. “You can have any political views,” Kupor said, “but if you allow those views to basically interfere with your willingness to actually carry out lawful orders and policy directives with the administration, then this provides a mechanism obviously for people in those agencies to be able to be removed effectively at will.”
The order is the latest action in a broader campaign by the Trump administration to reshape the federal workforce. Since October 2024, about 348,000 employees representing more than 11% of the government’s civilian workforce have left their jobs, according to figures cited by the administration. The move comes roughly a year after billionaire Elon Musk left his post overseeing a separate effort to slash government spending and payrolls.
During Trump’s first term, his administration attempted to reclassify federal employees to “at will” status under a framework called Schedule F, but the rule was rescinded by the Biden administration before it took full effect. The new order revives that proposal.
Labor union leaders have argued that the reclassification represents a step backward to the 19th-century spoils system, under which government jobs were awarded to political loyalists rather than based on merit. Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said in a statement that the administration’s “attempts to dismantle civil service protections would make it easier to purge experienced public servants.” She added, “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.”
Democracy Forward is representing several federal worker unions and their allies in a lawsuit filed in January challenging the administration’s efforts to strip civil service protections from workers. Federal judges paused the litigation while the Trump administration finalized changes.
The number of workers affected by Wednesday’s order — about 8,000 — is well below a ceiling estimate of up to 50,000 who could have been subject to new rules under the executive order. Senior administration officials said Trump could expand the grouping but had no immediate plans to do so.