New Trump administration rule makes it easier to fire career civil servants

The Office of Personnel Management’s new rule would reclassify high ranking officials as at-will and they could be fired for 'intentionally subverting Presidential directives'.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has finalised its overhaul of the US government’s civil service system, according to a government statement, giving the president the power to hire and fire an estimated 50,000 career federal employees.

The US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on Thursday is set to create a new category for high-ranking career employees involved in carrying out administration policies, the Wall Street Journal reported. Personnel in that category would be exempted from longstanding civil service protections that make federal workers difficult to fire.

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OPM officials said the rule is aimed in part at “disciplining” federal workers who stand in the way of Trump’s policies, the paper reported. It added that the new category applies to senior positions that are policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating in nature.

“People can’t be conscientious objectors in the workforce in a way where it interferes with their ability to carry out their mission,” OPM’s director Scott Kupor said in an interview with the WSJ.

“These positions will remain career jobs filled on a non-partisan basis. Yet they will be at-will positions excepted from adverse action procedures or appeals. This will allow agencies to quickly remove employees from critical positions who engage in misconduct, perform poorly, or obstruct the democratic process by intentionally subverting Presidential directives,” the more than 250-page directive from OPM claimed.

The federal government has long been seen as a stable employer, with staff commonly spending decades working at US agencies. Trump and his team sought to change that at the start of his second term, as he argued that the federal government was bloated and inefficient.

In 2025, the White House made aggressive cuts to the federal workforce, with more than 300,000 people leaving the nation’s largest employer.

The OPM did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.