Posted on 04/04/2024 11:49:25 AM PDT by Red Badger
President Joe Biden’s administration announced its plan on Thursday to protect bureaucrats from being fired by a potential second Trump administration.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) finalized a rule that protects employees in the civil service by preventing the removal of their status and protections involuntarily, according to a press release. Under the new rule, an administration wishing to shift federal employees to a new category making them easier to fire would have to go through an elongated process, a move meant to be more time-consuming for a future president, Politico reported.
“Career federal employees deliver critical services for Americans in every community,” OPM Director Kiran Ahuja said in a press release. “This final rule honors our 2.2 million career civil servants, helping ensure that people are hired and fired based on merit and that they can carry out their duties based on their expertise and not political loyalty. The Biden-Harris Administration is deeply committed to the federal workforce, as these professionals are vital to our national security, our health, our economic prosperity, and much more.”
The rule is widely viewed as a response to an executive order signed in 2020 by former President Donald Trump, Politico reported. The executive order targeted federal workers, removing protections from some employees and make it easier for the president to hire and fire them.
The executive order took some entrenched bureaucrats “in positions of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character” and put them in a different category considered “Schedule F,” making them easier to fire.
The OPM rule quotes this language directly, even referencing “Schedule F.”
The final rule advances “policy goals,” the press release states, by “clarifying that the phrase ‘confidential, policy determining, policymaking, or policy-advocating’ positions—a term of art to describe positions that lack civil service protections—means noncareer, political appointments. This rule prevents that exception from being misapplied to career civil servants.”
“Schedule F,” the OPM press release stated, would have rid employees of their civil service protections which ensure that employment decisions are “based on merit, not political considerations. ”
The final rule is set to be published in the Federal Register on Thursday, the press release stated.
“This rule is about making sure the American public can continue to count on federal workers to apply their skills and expertise in carrying out their jobs, no matter their personal political beliefs,” OPM Deputy Director Rob Shriver told reporters, according to Politico.
In addition to Trump’s executive order, conservatives have pushed the importance of remaking the federal bureaucracy, and Trump allies have indicated it could be a key priority in a second term. In 2023, a majority of political donations made by federal employees went to President Joe Biden and fellow Democrats, a Daily Caller News Foundation analysis found.
The Deep State Swamp DC elites always plan to survive the miserable subjects serving them.
Next phase explained in Dr. Strangelove.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8icpnrLqx0
Is it even true that Trump would need to actually fire anybody?
As The Executive, I think he has the Authority to pull a “Milei,” close entire Executive Branch agencies and appropriate $0.00 for them in the Federal Budget.
Or it’s a fake, to make Trump complacent.
Or the fixers and the bureaucrats are operating independently.
Don’t lose hope.
It’s not how many times you get knocked down, it’s how many times you ... get ... back ... up.
ping
EPA nor Dept. of Ed were “created by Congress, IIRC.
Exactly
Is it just a coincidence that so many anti-American individuals are employed by and in high positions in our Central Government, or is there something more sinister at work?
The way around this is to elect a conservative Republican House and Senate and instruct them to pass “Reduction in Force” legislation on day one of President Trump’s term.
Congress has passed military “RIF” laws in the past; Civil Service RIFs should be a no-brainer.
Send them TAD to lower slabovia
President Reagan “sorted out” the FAA without official blowback. President Trump could do likewise, and “sort out” the entire Civil Service!
This actually started under the Clintons and continued later under Obama.
They changed the status of what used to be political appointee positions, spoils of winning the office of POTUS, to Civil Service positions, for the very reason stated: making them damn near impossible to fire, and thus cementing their benefactor’s policy initiatives in stone. By the time the new president could get them gone he would be out of office. Biden is just following the orders of the predecessors in completing the takeover of the bureaucracy.............permanently.............
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