Biden Administration Aims to Trump-Proof the Federal Work Force
If Donald Trump wins a second term, he and his allies want to revive a plan to allow a president to fire civil service workers who are supposed to be hired on merit. The Biden administration is trying to thwart it.
When President Biden took office, he swiftly canceled an executive order his predecessor Donald J. Trump had issued that could have enabled Mr. Trump to fire tens of thousands of federal workers and replace them with loyalists. But Democrats never succeeded in enacting legislation to strengthen protections for the civil service system as a matter of law.
Now, with Mr. Trump seemingly poised to win the G.O.P. nomination again, the Biden administration is instead trying to effectively Trump-proof the civil service with a new regulation.
On Friday, the White House proposed a new rule that would make it more onerous to reinstate Mr. Trump’s old executive order if Mr. Trump or a like-minded Republican wins the 2024 election.
But Trump allies who would most likely have senior roles in any second Trump administration shrugged off the proposed Biden rule, saying they could simply use the same rule-making process to roll back the new regulation and then proceed. Legal experts agreed.
The proposed rule addresses the move Mr. Trump tried to make late in his presidency by issuing an executive order known in shorthand as Schedule F. It would have empowered his administration to strip job protections from many career federal employees — who are supposed to be hired based on merit and cannot be arbitrarily fired. While the order said agencies should not hire or fire Schedule F employees based on political affiliation, it effectively would have made these employees more like political appointees who can be fired at will.
Career civil servants include professional staff across the government who stay on when the presidency changes hands. They vary widely, including law enforcement officers and technical experts at agencies that Congress created to make rules aimed at ensuring the air and water are clean and food, drugs and consumer products are safe.
By Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman
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