President Trump is reclassifying employees in two federal agencies to pave the way for their eventual termination. The president had promised to reclassify 50,000 federal workers as political appointees and remove their immunity from termination.
He also promised to transfer 100,000 jobs out of Washington, D.C., to encourage bureaucrats to resign. By February, another 60,000 federal workers had accepted Trump’s buyout offer to leave their jobs in exchange for advance salaries.
On January 20, he also signed the executive order “Restoring Accountability To Policy-Influencing Positions Within The Federal Workforce” to manage the federal workforce and ensure the execution of federal law.
On April 3, Reuters reported that Trump has started reclassifying jobs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Department of Energy (DOE), according to an email sent to employees.
“I understand that there is a lot of concern and uncertainty about Schedule Policy/Career and want to provide the best information currently available,” NOAA acting administrator told employees in an email.
The reclassification affected federal workers in supervisory research roles at various departments, including the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, National Ocean Service, and Office of Marine and Aviation Operations.
However, the number of currently affected federal workers was not immediately available, and the preliminary list was subject to change to include more employees.
Although the reclassification fell short of declaring the employees as political appointees, it required them to support the government’s political agenda. Trump’s executive order highlighted instances of federal employees in policy-influencing positions resisting lawful orders from the president, who has the sole executive power to direct policy.
“In recent years, however, there have been numerous and well-documented cases of career Federal employees resisting and undermining the policies and directives of their executive leadership,” the order stated.
The executive order also decried the challenges of removing insubordinate or poorly performing workers, which undermines accountability. Subsequently, only 41% of civil service supervisors said they were confident they could remove federal employees for serious misconduct, while only 26% believed they could fire non-performing government workers.
However, Trump’s attempts to fire thousands of federal workers have encountered numerous legal challenges, for which liberal activist judges are only too happy to grant injunctions.
On March 13, Obama judge U.S. District Judge James Bredar in Baltimore ordered the Trump administration to reinstate probationary workers and halt the mass layoffs for two weeks.
Similarly, U.S. District Judge William Alsup had ruled that the federal mass layoffs directed by the Office of Personnel Management were unconstitutional. The judge also ordered the administration to provide a list of compliance measures for each of the previously terminated employees. That ruling affected federal employees in the Agriculture, Defense, Veterans Affairs, Interior, Treasury, and Energy departments.
The lawsuit had stemmed from a coalition of labor unions that challenged the Trump administration’s attempts to reduce the federal workforce.
It remains unclear what the subtle reclassification hopes to achieve except to remind the federal employees that they work under the president’s authority.
