President-elect Trump’s plans to reshape the federal workforce would allow him to fire wide swaths of career employees and replace them with political appointees — a move that comes as he has demanded loyalty at every level of government.
Trump has said he will reissue an order released in the waning days of his first administration that ends merit-based hiring for a number of federal jobs that work on policy, instead creating a new class of federal employees — Schedule F — that could be hired and fired just like political appointees.
It’s sparking alarm among federal workers, who see it as a way to insert politics into government actions, a move that could both reward Trump allies and politicize government decisionmaking.
“I think there would probably be an exodus, because federal employees just want to do their jobs. They want to do the job according to law and regulation,” said Jacqueline Simon, policy director of the American Federation of Government Employees.
“They do not want to be political appointees. They don’t want politics to interfere with any aspect of their job.”
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