The Biden administration is implementing a new rule that will make it more difficult to fire bureaucrats in an apparent attempt to counter Donald Trump’s efforts to cut many federal workers.

The White House released a statement Thursday regarding “the final rule to protect nonpartisan civil servants.”

“A new rule adopted by the Office of Personnel Management boosts protections for government employees, making it harder to fire them,” The Epoch Times writes.

According to the outlet, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) hinted in a statement that it’s targeting a promised move by President Trump to “drain the swamp and root out the deep state” when he retakes office.

Per The Epoch Times:

“In the first week of the Biden-Harris Administration, President Biden revoked an Executive Order issued by the previous Administration that risked altering our country’s long-standing merit-based civil service system, by creating new excepted service schedule, known as ‘Schedule F,’ and directing agencies to move potentially large swathes of career employees into this new excepted service status,” OPM said in the statement.

This is in reference to a Trump-era executive order issued in 2020 that allowed tens of thousands of the 2.2 million federal employees to be reclassified as political appointees, making it easier to fire them.

Roughly 4,000 federal employees are now considered political appointees, who typically change with each administration, with the revival of a Schedule F potentially increasing that more than tenfold.

President Joe Biden nixed the Schedule F order when he took office, while President Trump said in mid-2022 that he would try to revive the concept in one form or another.

“OPM’s final rule is yet another example of the Biden Administration’s efforts to insulate the federal workforce from accountability,” House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-KY) said in a statement, according to Fox News. 

“The federal workforce exists to serve the American people, yet many Americans have a deep and growing distrust of the federal bureaucracy. The Biden Administration’s rule will further undermine Americans’ confidence in their government since it allows poor performing federal workers and those who attempt to thwart the policies of a duly elected President to remain entrenched in the federal bureaucracy. We need more accountability for the unelected federal bureaucracy, not less,” he continued.

Fox News reports:

Biden deemed the rule to be “a step toward combatting corruption and partisan interference to ensure civil servants are able to focus on the most important task at hand: delivering for the American people.”

The Office of Personnel Management, the government’s chief human resources agency, on Thursday implemented new regulations barring career civil servants from being reclassified as political appointees, or as other at-will workers, who are more easily dismissed from their jobs. It comes in response to “Schedule F,” an executive order Trump issued in 2020 that sought to allow for reclassifying tens of thousands of the 2.2 million federal employees and thus reduce their job security protections, according to the Associated Press.

Biden nullified Schedule F upon taking office, but if Trump were to revive it during a second administration, he could dramatically increase the around 4,000 federal employees who are considered political appointees and typically change with each new president. How many employees might have been affected by Schedule F is unclear.

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