“We'll fight it in the courts, and we will fight it until we block it. And if they somehow get part of it through, we will work to repeal it.
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Trump Strips Civil Service Protections from 8,000 Senior Federal Workers
June 3, 2026
President Trump signed an executive order on June 3, 2026 reclassifying approximately 8,000 senior federal workers — nearly all at the GS-15 pay grade — into a new "Schedule Policy/Career" category that makes them at-will employees who can be fired without cause. The affected positions include policy directors, chiefs of staff, senior advisers, public affairs officials, and grant managers. The administration framed the move as accountability reform; critics called it a politically motivated purge designed to replace qualified career officials with loyalists. The order is already subject to legal challenges, and Democrats introduced the Saving the Civil Service Act to block the reclassification.
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“They want to convert these positions that right now are based on your qualifications for the job, what you know, your experience — into positions where they can appoint political hacks to do the job, which directly undermines the whole idea behind the merit-based civil service.
“For decades, our nonpartisan civil service has set us apart from other countries and enabled us to have stability and continuity no matter who is in the White House. The Trump Administration's move to reclassify federal employees to make it easier to fire them for political reasons will hurt these workers and their families, threaten our national security, and make it harder for Americans to access the services they need. If we want to continue to lead the world, then we must have a federal workforce based on merit, not politics.
“For decades, our nonpartisan civil service has set us apart from other countries and enabled us to have stability and continuity no matter who is in the White House. The Trump Administration's move to reclassify federal employees to make it easier to fire them for political reasons will hurt these workers and their families, threaten our national security, and make it harder for Americans to access the services they need.