Trump Boosts Accountability in Federal Workforce

RESTORING ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order that makes senior Federal leaders that influence policy decisions more accountable to the American people.

• The Order reclassifies about 8,000 senior policy-influencing positions into Schedule Policy/Career.
• While this rule allows for heightened accountability, these remain "career" positions and the non-partisan hiring processes, competitive status, and other aspects of these roles will not change. Removal decisions will also be made without respect to political affiliation.
• Roles listed on Schedule Policy/Career are at-will positions. Agencies can remove employees in Schedule Policy/Career for poor performance, misconduct, corruption, or subversion of Presidential directives without lengthy procedural hurdles that often prevent accountability, consistent with the ability to remove appointees responsible for implementing the President's agenda.
  • 97% of reclassified positions are GS-15 or Senior Level positions (or the equivalent in agencies with different pay plans). These are the highest-ranking career positions outside of the Senior Executive Service.
  • These roles include agency positions such as directors, deputy directors, chiefs of staff, senior advisors and policy analysts, employees with significant involvement in drafting regulations and guidance, public affairs and legislative affairs leaders, and employees with significant involvement in determining who gets Federal grants.

FIXING A BROKEN SYSTEM: Personnel rules make removing Federal employees for any reason exceedingly difficult. Consequently, employees with significant policy-making responsibilities can stay in their jobs for years even if they perform poorly, engage in misconduct, or are unwilling to advance Presidential policy across administrations, making their agencies less capable of delivering for the American people.

• Federal employee removal procedures are lengthy and burdensome. Removals and subsequent appeals often take a year or more to process. As a result, agencies seldom remove career employees, even at senior levels, including for egregious conduct or subversion of Presidential priorities.
  • When polled, a plurality of senior federal employees in Washington, D.C. said they would ignore a lawful order from President Trump that they considered bad policy, although all executive branch employees report to the President.
  • During the first Trump Administration, career employees refused to assist on policy matters like prosecuting racial discrimination in higher education or drafting rules regarding Title IX reform because of their personal policy disagreements.
• Elected officials must be able to hold policy-making career employees accountable for their performance and conduct in order to operationalize the policies that voters elected them to pursue.

DRAINING THE SWAMP: President Trump is delivering on his promise to dismantle the deep state and reclaim our government from Washington ineptitude and corruption.

• President Trump authorized buyout programs to encourage Federal employees to leave voluntarily. Adoption was large, yet unsurprisingly, the Federal government has remained more than capable of delivering on its core functions for the American people.
  • Under President Trump, the Federal workforce has been reduced to its lowest level since 1966.
• Last year, President Trump signed an Executive Order requiring Federal hiring to follow specific policies and procedures established by agency leadership to improve the efficient delivery of government services.
• President Trump's Office of Personnel Management has proposed rules to improve Federal employee performance appraisals, expedite removals for serious misconduct, and streamline the cumbersome reduction-in-force process.
• President Trump established a new Civil Service Rule XI, requiring agencies to affirmatively determine whether probationary employees' performance warrants retention, rather than letting them become tenured permanent employees by default, which was the previous practice.
• Today's Executive Order builds on Executive Order 13957, which was issued in President Trump's first term to reclassify senior federal workers in policy-related roles as at-will employees, enabling swift accountability for those in influential positions.
  • When President Biden took office, he revoked Executive Order 13957, reinstating a system that shielded unaccountable bureaucrats. The Biden Administration also issued regulations that sought to prevent such accountability measures by a future administration.
  • President Trump vowed on the campaign trail to reinstate Executive Order 13957, a promise he kept on his first day returning to office. The Office of Personnel Management has since rescinded the Biden Administration regulations that prevented Schedule Policy/Career's immediate implementation.