Dear Civil Servant,

The Trump administration has finally delivered on one of its dark first-day promises to destroy the merit-based civil service: A new rule has officially created Schedule Policy/Career (or Schedule P/C, a revived Schedule F). As expected, the new rule wrongly claims that Congress intended for some rank-and-file career civil servants to become at-will employees.

As we’ve seen over the past year, erosion of civil service protections hurt us all by forcing out employees who follow the law, blow the whistle, voice concerns about agency direction, have different political views than those in power, and simply do their job professionally.

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This is not the system Congress created, and it is not the system the American people deserve. That’s why we are fighting it in court. Public attention is rightfully focused on this administration’s other attacks on the rule of law and basic decency. But this new regulation shows that the civil service’s independence remains under siege — at a time when we are seeing career civil servants increasingly willing to walk away or speak up when their red lines are crossed.

The administration continues to hide its destruction of the merit system of government behind a deluge of changes and long, technical language. The public should be able to understand these critical new government policies and their impact so we can have a voice in how our government runs.

That’s why, in addition to fighting the Schedule P/C rule in court, we are unveiling the Civil Service Archive: an online searchable database that tracks changes to how the federal workforce works. This newsletter contains an explainer on the new Schedule P/C Rule, but you can also view the new regulation on the Archive, where you will find its full text, a plain-language summary that breaks it down, and a list of related changes that can help contextualize what is happening. The Archive catalogues over a hundred policy changes like this, and more are being added on a rolling basis. Sign up here to receive updates about new content on the Archive.

Breaking down the new Schedule P/C rule

Here are the basics: The Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) creates employment protections for career civil servants, including a requirement that firing be only for cause. The law creates a carve-out from many of these protections for political appointees — what it describes as positions of a “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating” character — to allow presidents and agencies to employ a modest number of shorter-term employees who share their policy priorities and are at-will employees who can be fired for any reason.

This carve-out is part of the balance Congress struck in creating a web of protections for civil servants: Most must be insulated from partisan hiring and firing, but the president also has loyalists to help advance the agenda he was elected to pursue, at least when that can be done consistent with law. But the Schedule P/C rule will upend that carefully-constructed system by expanding the number of people subject to the whims of the president and being fired for partisan reasons.

Here’s what’s happening now: We are currently in a period of time when the new rule is published but not yet effective — which means that Schedule P/C doesn’t technically exist yet, and no positions have been reclassified. The rule will take effect on Sunday, March 8, and OPM has announced that an executive order (which will presumably be issued after March 8) will announce the positions that are reclassified as Schedule P/C positions. This means we still do not know which positions the administration wants to move into Schedule Policy/Career.

Here’s what we’re doing to fight back: Protect Democracy and our co-counsel at Selendy Gay are challenging the new rule in court with plaintiffs Government Accountability Project and NARFE. Other litigation against the rule is also pending. The litigation has been on hold while the rule has been pending. It will rev back up soon, and you’ll be hearing from us with more details before long.

The Civil Service Archive: the what and why

As you all know better than anyone, Schedule P/C is but one of the Trump administration’s many attacks on the civil service. To keep these attacks from getting buried and to be able to undo them when the day for rebuilding comes, we have built a new tool called the Civil Service Archive. The Archive captures each change to how the civil service works in order to educate the public and policymakers so they can understand those policies and to help spot trends or themes in what these changes do.

This first release focuses on government-wide policies or practices, including some changes that affect multiple agencies but not the entire government. We plan to release agency-specific updates on a rolling basis, as they are ready. We aim to be comprehensive, but this is a work-in-progress. Instead of waiting for perfection, we are choosing to make public what we have now, as we keep working to gather and process more information.

Sign up here to receive updates when new content is added to the Archive.

The Archive will never capture every little thing related in any way to the federal government, however. The site catalogues policy changes concerning the internal workings of the federal executive branch bureaucracy. This means it includes changes to how the work is carried out — not what the work is. This also means the Archive contains policies or practices, not individual events. However, when a specific event (for example, a firing or an indictment) seems to imply the existence of a policy that is not otherwise tracked, we have tried to include it.

How can I find what I need in the Archive?

Information in the Archive is searchable by tag (note that if you select multiple tags it will narrow, not expand, the search). Each new policy is available as a PDF to preserve it and linked to the web page where it originated when possible. If you click on an entry in the Archive, you will also see a plain language summary of the policy change (written by humans with expertise in the civil service — not AI).

You can find an FAQ with more information on here. If you want to make sure we’re aware of a publicly available policy or practice that you think belongs in the Archive, you can email info@civilservicearchive.org. If you’re thinking of a document that is confidential, classified, privileged, or otherwise protected by law against disclosure, please do not send it to us. Bear in mind that we are leanly staffed, so we unfortunately cannot respond to each communication.

Explore the Civil Service Archive

See also

• This “tracker of trackers” | U.C. San Diego

• Federal policy watch — Tracking how the Trump administration, Congress, and the courts are affecting workers’ quality of life | Economic Policy Institute

• Federal harms tracker: the cost to your government — Tracking employee reductions across federal agencies | Partnership for Public Service

• Worker policy watch — Tracking how federal policies are shaping workers’ rights—and what’s at stake for working people nationwide under the Trump administration | National Employment Project

What we’re reading

• The purged | Franklin Foer, The Atlantic

• 220,000 fewer workers: how Trump’s cuts affected every federal agency | Emily Badger, Francesca Paris, and Alicia Parlapiano, The New York Times

• Public service in America: a decade of danger and the choice to fix it | Isabella Ulloa and Abby André, Lawfare

• Rise of the Trump loyalist | Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic

This publication should not be construed as legal advice on any specific facts or circumstances. The contents are intended for general information and educational purposes only, and should not be relied on as if it were advice about a particular fact situation. The distribution of this publication is not intended to create, and receipt of it does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship with Protect Democracy. This publication also contains hypertext links to information created and maintained by other entities. Protect Democracy does not control or guarantee the accuracy or completeness of this outside information, nor is the inclusion of a link to be intended as an endorsement of those outside sites.

Dear Civil Servant,

After months of intense litigation, probationary employees in AFGE v. OPM have won a decisive victory in district court.

Or have they?

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It’s true, they “won” — a federal judge ruled that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) acted illegally, both by exceeding its power and instructing agencies to lie about why they were firing probationary employees. But the court did not give the employees their jobs back.

The judge cited the Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year to allow the government to proceed with firing probationary employees while the case was litigated. He decided it was very likely that the high court would again interfere if he were to reinstate them. And, because so much time had passed, many employees and agencies had already moved on — it is hard to put something so broken back together.

In short, the probationary employees won on the law, but the Supreme Court’s rulings made it so that the Trump administration won in practice.

You could call this a “Pyrrhic victory” — a win of questionable value because of its extraordinarily high cost in comparison to what it actually achieved. The phrase is named after an ancient general who won battles against the Romans but lost so many troops in the fights that he could no longer field an army, famously remarking: “One more such victory and we are undone.”

Lawsuits like this are resource-intensive, and this case was vigorously litigated for months by talented attorneys, with tremendous support from the civil servants themselves. By contrast, the district court seemed to question whether the government was even litigating in good faith, calling the record of decision making the Trump administration compiled “a sham.”

But the Supreme Court’s earlier decision to permit the firings ensured that the government “won” anyway, in a sense. Though the probationary employees can claim victory in the actual lawsuit, the government gets what it wants: no more probationary employees.

In this newsletter, we explain how civil servants — former or current, probationary or not — should understand the ruling. And we unpack how the effects of the Supreme Court’s interference in this case suggest the Supreme Court has taken a stark authoritarian turn by grabbing power from the lower courts.

Ten questions on what the probationary ruling means for civil servants

Were the probationary employees illegally fired?

Yes.

Will probationary employees get their jobs back?

No.

What did the probationary employees get from the win?

The court ordered that OPM can’t direct any more similar firings and that agencies can’t follow such OPM directions if they receive them. For the employees themselves, the court ordered that the government:

• Update the employee’s personnel files, including their SF-50, to reflect that their termination “was not performance or conduct based.”

• Send a letter to each affected probationary employee stating, “You were not terminated on the basis of your personal performance.”

• Refrain from telling anyone that probationary employees were fired because of their performance.

Do the courts not have the power to give employees their jobs back?

Reinstatement — giving someone their job back — is something the courts generally can do in employment-related cases. The judge here acknowledged that, writing that in “the ordinary course” the court would return “probationers to their posts.”

So…if the court can reinstate employees, why didn’t it?

The judge offered two reasons for why he was not ordering reinstatement:

1. That too much time had passed since the Supreme Court lifted the initial ruling that would have kept probationers in their jobs while the lawsuit played out, meaning that agencies have changed and many probationers have moved on; and

2. That “the Supreme Court has made clear enough by way of its emergency docket that it will overrule judicially granted relief respecting hirings and firings within the executive” — in other words, the judge assumed that even if he did reinstate probationary employees, the Supreme Court would quickly undo that reinstatement.

For context, the Supreme Court’s decision to jump into an ongoing lawsuit (at the Trump administration’s invitation) so early and disagree with the district court is, historically, fairly extraordinary.

For most of American history, district courts have been entrusted with the job of taking in a huge amount of information, determining which facts are true, and deciding who is legally in the right. This can take a year or more, as can the appeal that comes after that. In the normal course, it is only then that the Supreme Court would consider a case and make a ruling — and they would do so with the benefit of the other judges’ factual and legal analyses.

Making an abnormally early ruling in a case, before facts or legal determinations have been made at all, used to be nearly unheard of. But the Supreme Court has begun to use its “emergency docket” — once used mostly for procedural or life-or-death issues — to insert itself early into litigation. The judge in the probationary employee case was calling out this new SCOTUS modus operandi as the reason he did not reinstate probationary employees.

You’re telling me that both of the reasons that probationary employees didn’t get their jobs back are related to the Supreme Court?

Yes, we sure are.

Some lawsuits seek money; with some exceptions, money can be doled out at any time to remedy the problem. But other lawsuits — like most suits challenging illegal civil service actions — ask courts to stop something from happening, which is called seeking an injunction. As this case shows, injunctions really only work if they happen at the right time (i.e., if they actually prevent the allegedly illegal thing from happening), and that is why courts nominally have the power to grant early (“preliminary”) injunctions to freeze the status quo while an entire lawsuit plays out.

But here, and in many, many other cases where the district court found that a preliminary injunction was necessary, the Supreme Court has interfered early to knock down that injunction and let the government continue to engage in the potentially unlawful activity while the case is litigated. As the probationary “win” painfully demonstrates, without the power to effectively freeze the status quo at the beginning of a case and feel confident that the freeze will last until the case is resolved, courts can’t actually fix the problems caused by illegal government acts. The Supreme Court has taken that power from lower courts. (More on the Supreme Court’s authoritarian power grab below.)

What does this ruling mean for other civil servants challenging unlawful employment actions?

We had been living in a country where — despite their imperfections — federal courts did a decent job of halting federal policies that were plainly illegal. That has changed. The Supreme Court’s interest in holding the executive branch to a standard of legality — where the bounds of legality are defined by the existence of statutes, precedents, and a shared commitment to complying with those — is breaking down.

We see this in the Supreme Court’s apparent eagerness to allow the Trump administration to pursue policies that district court judges — after immersing themselves in the record and the legal arguments and rendering carefully reasoned decisions — have deemed unlawful. We also see it in the way that the Supreme Court has allowed the channels of accountability and remediation — like the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), where federal employees have long turned when faced with an improper employment action — to break down.

While these channels might eventually be fixed, you should not rely on them to right wrongs.

That’s gloomy. What should civil servants do, practically speaking?

The adage “hope for the best, prepare for the worst” resonates here. Yes, you know your firing was illegal, unfair, and a slap in the face after your years of service. You can acknowledge that truth and still prepare for the worst. If you have been fired, or if you believe your role or office might be on the chopping block, look for a new job, and/or prepare to be unemployed.

We have other advice here about how to prepare for an involuntary departure, and Civil Service Strong has a series of relevant explainers.

As a current civil servant, how do I know if my job is at risk?

The current threats have common themes: politicization and loyalty.

After the initial purges of employees and offices, administration signaled that civil servants may only retain their jobs if they are seen as “loyal” to the president by firing certain individuals for being perceived as “opposing” the president (e.g., EPA employees who publicly spoke out about issues at their agencies, the pardon attorney who refused to recommend Mel Gibson get his gun rights back, people who were assigned to work on J6 investigations). Now, with the introduction of Schedule G and ideological screening questions in the regular hiring process, you can expect a wave of Trump loyalists to enter the civil service — some in quite senior positions. These new hires are likely to vigorously advance the administration’s priorities and worldview, and are not likely to tolerate dissent. The administration has also previewed upcoming efforts to change the civil service regulations in ways that would make it easier to fire employees who they perceive as not politically-aligned.

Your position may be at risk if:

• Your office or agency works on issues that have been politicized, which unfortunately today includes things like vaccines and the weather.

• You worked in the past on issues that this administration disapproves of, or that its allies see as “lefty” causes.

• You are perceived as being associated with individuals who have been targeted or criticized by the Trump administration or its allies.

• You may be ordered to take an action that violates your own personal or professional ethics (or the law), meaning that you might be forced to resign or be fired.

To be clear, firing you or getting rid of your position for these reasons may well be illegal. For example, the First Amendment should protect you from being terminated for who you are related to, or for politically disfavored work that you previously did excellently. But these days, that’s just not enough to protect against getting fired, and it is unclear whether challenges to such firings will succeed.

As a former civil servant, does that mean I shouldn’t challenge my illegal separation?

No. As much as we’re advocating realism about the current state of affairs, we still have hope for a more regular future. That means doing the next right thing and trusting that the small efforts will add up to big change. For illegally fired civil servants, that may mean challenging your removal. While some federal employees have brought federal court lawsuits, the most straightforward way for most civil servants to challenge a wrongful removal is before the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB). Civil Service Strong has an explainer on how to e-file an MSPB appeal by yourself. Why do this? Because you might get your job back, and you will definitely contribute to building up evidence about this administration’s illegal civil service purges.

The Supreme Court’s power grab

When we talk about rising authoritarianism, the conversation has focused on executive power: the single autocrat who is consolidating power in a single office. At Protect Democracy, we literally wrote the 2025 Authoritarian Playbook about “how an authoritarian president will dismantle our democracy and what we can do to protect it.” In looking at the other two branches of government — Congress and the courts — we have generally asked whether they are checking the authoritarian power grab or complicit in enabling it; we have not asked if they are the power grab.

We should now be seriously asking that question about the Supreme Court — but we should not treat the entire judiciary as a monolith. The probationary employees lawsuit lays bare that the Supreme Court has used its “shadow docket” to usurp power from lower courts and inhibit their ability to perform the role that our system of government has demanded of them.

This is, of course, what authoritarian executives do: They aggrandize their own power, sometimes by stealing power from other institutions; weaken checks on that power; and quash any criticism or dissent.

By preventing lower courts from being able to swiftly stop likely illegality and mitigate harm while a case is litigated, the Supreme Court has transformed itself — already quite powerful by any measure — into effectively the only court. Its power is unchecked, even by time, which ordinarily kept cases from the Court until lawyers and judges had spent months or years developing facts and legal arguments. And when the Supreme Court has perceived that its absolute power was being disregarded by lower courts, members of the Court have publicly criticized and shamed those judges — accusing them of “judicial hubris” or defying orders. This is against the backdrop of growing safety concerns for lower court judges; many have received death threats and other attacks after deciding cases against the Trump administration.

Many district court judges are speaking publicly about how the surge of shadow docket matters is hampering their ability to do their jobs and undermining trust in the rule of law. After a number of instances in which administration attorneys appeared to mislead lower courts, lower court judges are appropriately demanding that the administration prove its claims rather than giving them the benefit of the doubt, once known as the presumption of regularity. This is remarkable, in some respects, as judges are some of the most careful and circumspect members of the legal profession; one must be risk-averse to be confirmed as a judge, or so the wisdom goes.

Perhaps none of us had “district court judges as a bulwark against the Supreme Court’s rising authoritarianism” on our bingo cards. But maybe that was wrong. Many judges are people of principle who have worked within our system of government and seen that it can work, as imperfect as it sometimes can be. Many care deeply about fairness and the rule of law. They know intimately, deeply, painfully what will be lost if our system of American government falls.

In other words: They share many characteristics with civil servants.

We know many of you are gone, either because you were forced out, fired, or simply couldn’t take it anymore. But for those who remain, we’re inspired by the example of these district court judges who are speaking their truth to power. Onward.

Resources

• Our Resign or Be Fired explainer, which offers information on practical implications of choosing to resign or being fired, such as effects on unemployment and employee benefits. (The first page is most helpful for lawyers; all other pages are for everyone.)

• FedsForward’s Career Solutions helps government employees transfer their skills and experiences to private-sector work.

• Explore the Federal Unionists Network, “a network of federal unionists and our allies organizing to support each other in strengthening our unions, improving our agencies, and building solidarity across the federal sector of the labor movement.”

• Check out the Partnership for Public Service‘s upcoming career transition webinars on Sept. 24 and 30.

• Public Service Alliance (PSA) recently launched a marketplace to support public servants seeking personal wellbeing, privacy, security, and legal resources. You can explore PSA’s free-to-low-cost services here.

• Explore FiredbutFighting’s shared community calendar for resources and organizing events (virtual and in-person) near you.

• WellFed provides three recurring weekly virtual programs [monday meditation, wednesday workshops and friday career co-working] designed to provide structure, support, and momentum for professionals navigating career transitions.

What we’re reading

• NPR: These fired DOJ lawyers are finding new ways to make a difference.

• ProPublica: The untold saga of what happened when DOGE stormed Social Security.

This publication should not be construed as legal advice on any specific facts or circumstances. The contents are intended for general information and educational purposes only, and should not be relied on as if it were advice about a particular fact situation. The distribution of this publication is not intended to create, and receipt of it does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship with Protect Democracy. This publication also contains hypertext links to information created and maintained by other entities. Protect Democracy does not control or guarantee the accuracy or completeness of this outside information, nor is the inclusion of a link to be intended as an endorsement of those outside sites.

Dear Civil Servant,

Hell-bent on politicizing the civil service, the Trump administration came out swinging with multiple executive orders, memoranda, and internal guidance meant to ensure that only loyalists were retained or hired as civil servants. For months, there have been open questions about how these orders would get implemented, about what they would mean in practice. No longer. The wheels are now in motion, and a new Trumpified version of the civil service is starting to take shape.

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One helpful tool bringing transparency to the politicization of federal hiring is the "Merit Hiring Plan" Essay Tracker built by former civil servant and engineer/data scientist Abigail Haddad. We’ve written before about the “Merit Hiring Plan” from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to insert politically-coded essay questions into the federal hiring process — for example, “Identify one or two relevant executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you.”

Read more: The “patriot” in the cubicle next door.

This website identifies all the job posts that include those essay questions, and some of the information is eye-popping. The administration apparently wants meat cutters and cancer nurses to answer these political questions before being hired. And on top of that, as we’ll discuss more below, they are politicizing the review process that new hires have to go through in order to keep their jobs.

But before we jump in, the pro-democracy coalition needs your help. Data tools like this website can only do so much; the coalition needs to hear from you — real human beings with stories to tell.

And if you know of others who are interested in federal jobs or may have information, then please pass the surveys on to them! Your answers can help inform efforts to fight back against the politicization of the civil service. We can’t do this without you.

Where politically-coded questions are showing up in federal hiring

Which positions are now asking these questions? In the “Merit Hiring Plan” Essay Tracker, we spotted these questions for safety-related positions where we really care that talented people apply and that hiring managers probe actual qualifications. See posts for senior aviation safety officer and lead wildland firefighter - assistant fire helicopter crew. For these positions especially, it’s bad for all of us if those essay questions deter or weed out great candidates.

There are other jobs where these essay questions are problematic because political neutrality should be seen as a core characteristic of a good hire. No good comes from ensuring that a federal supervisory patent examiner or criminal investigator is loyal to political leaders.

We also noticed the essays were added to posts for a dental hygienist, meat cutter, crane operator, and oncology nurse. Should that meat cutter be able to discuss her favorite executive order in order to prove she’s qualified for the job? No. And if the question won’t show an applicant’s qualifications, what is it there for? As a political test.

Clearly, these questions are not a tool to help build the most capable civil service — one where air traffic controllers land our planes safely and investigators root out fraud regardless of the wrongdoer. They are a mechanism for solidifying political control, ensuring that all ranks of the administration are filled with people who are politically aligned with the executive.

How changes to probationary rules lead to politicized retention

If you have ever been a civil servant, you probably served a probationary period before becoming a full-fledged federal employee. And unless you had performance issues, your transition from probationary status to permanent employment was probably a smooth one. If you’re considering applying for a new federal job or putting your name in for a promotion, the required probationary period may not be giving you pause. After all, you did it once, and it was no big deal, right?

Not anymore. Executive Order 14284 and two guidance memos from OPM (1, 2) are fundamentally changing the nature of the probationary period in ways that risk further politicizing the civil service.

Most concerningly, the new rules require that a high level agency official — “and ideally an official who is either politically appointed and/or is at the Senior Executive Service (SES) or equivalent level” — not an employee’s actual first-line supervisor — evaluate whether the probationary employee should keep their job. And the burden is on the employee to prove they should keep their job based on criteria that include the agency’s needs and whether the “employee’s continued employment would advance organizational goals.”

The new rules also mandate two-year trial periods for excepted service employees (previously agencies could decide) and require that employees who are hired from a reinstatement priority list (which many RIF’d employees end up on) complete probationary periods in their new jobs — even if they’ve completed probationary periods in the past.

If you’re thinking it could be hard for regular employees like the dental hygienists and meat cutters mentioned above to prove that their “continued employment would advance organizational goals of the agency or the Government” — same. The agency is best positioned to know its own goals, its strategic plan for advancing them, and how line-level employees fit into that plan.

But very broad standards like the one OPM has created to judge whether probationary employees can keep their jobs invite a lot of discretion, and they do so on purpose. Under this regime, a probationary employee could be fired for a vague reason like “she didn’t prove continued employment would advance the mission of the agency” — and allowing such vague justifications leaves a lot of room for pretextual firings. Also concerning is the shift to considering factors that are unrelated to the employees' performance or conduct. Addressing the broader needs of agencies is what RIFs or reorganizations are for; probationary periods have been for assessing individual employees.

There have been some good-faith critiques of the probationary period system as it existed before the Trump administration’s revisions, but these revisions are not intended to and will not solve those problems.

These changes instead give political appointees cover to fire unwanted employees for political reasons, discriminatory reasons, or any arbitrary reason at all — without leaving the sort of paper trail (like a memo justifying letting the employee go) that could empower the employee to challenge their termination.

How politicized hiring and retention practices fit together

Let’s put the pieces together: To be hired as a civil servant into an increasing number of positions, you may have your politically-coded essays scrutinized by a Trump administration political appointee. Recall as well that OPM has directed that “Agency leadership, or designee(s), should conduct a final ‘executive interview’ to confirm organizational fit and commitment to American ideals.”

And if you make it past those hurdles, a year or two later you’ll need to fight again for your job by convincing senior officials — maybe even a political appointee — that you are advancing their goals. You might do great work and win the adoration of your immediate supervisor, but under these rules you can be fired anyway by higher-ups based on criteria that are ill-defined, unconnected to your work, and implicitly political in nature.

These new rules — along with the context that this administration has engaged in a pattern of firing people they believe aren’t sufficiently loyal — are likely to seriously deter talented but politically diverse applicants.

Of course, one type of individual may not be deterred: someone who is confident in their ability to win over the political appointees involved in hiring and retaining civil servants. In other words: a loyalist.

Did you fill out those surveys yet?

We can’t overstate how important it is for the coalition to hear from you. Thanks for taking a few minutes — here are those links again:

• Interest in Federal Jobs survey

• Hiring Practices survey

Resources

• Partnership for Public Service - Federal Harms Tracker

• Share more about your federal knowledge through PopVox Foundation’s Departure Dialogues Project and The Federal Employees and Contractors Oral History Project

• Foundation for Powering Public Service - Resource Hub

• In July, USAID’s unions’ legal challenge to USAID’s dismantling was dismissed and their class appeals to fight federal employee terminations were denied. These dedicated public servants must now launch costly individual legal appeals. PragmaticPanic is supporting fundraising efforts to ensure they won’t have to fight this battle alone. You can donate to help raise legal funds for former USAID staffers here.

What we’re reading

• Reuters - Pro-Trump group wages campaign to purge “subversive” federal worker

• Federal News Network - OPM launches ‘radically different’ training program for federal executives

• Partnership for Public Service - The state of public trust in government in 2025

• Paul Starr - The premature guide to post-Trump reform

• Ken Klippenstein - Rubio offers ass-kissing bonus to diplomats

• Walter M. Shaub, Jr. - Weaponizing the watchdog

• William J. Burns - A letter to America’s discarded public servants

This publication should not be construed as legal advice on any specific facts or circumstances. The contents are intended for general information and educational purposes only, and should not be relied on as if it were advice about a particular fact situation. The distribution of this publication is not intended to create, and receipt of it does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship with Protect Democracy. This publication also contains hypertext links to information created and maintained by other entities. Protect Democracy does not control or guarantee the accuracy or completeness of this outside information, nor is the inclusion of a link to be intended as an endorsement of those outside sites.

Dear Civil Servant,

Since January, it’s felt like Trump administration officials have been competing to see who could remove the most civil servants from their jobs. They’ve tried everything — paying Feds to leave, offering deferred and early retirement, transferring people to undesirable task forces, reductions in force (RIFs), and (of course) outright firing Feds.

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Against that backdrop, enter Schedule G: President Trump issued an executive order creating Schedule G — a new tool that would let him hire an unlimited number of “policy-making or policy-advocating” political appointees with little transparency or oversight. Schedule G is not a tool for firing; these folks would be easier to hire.

Why is this such a big deal?

Schedule G lays bare what we’ve long known: the Trump administration’s strategy is not just to fire civil servants; it’s to fire them and then fill their roles with loyalists. The White House is now working on the other side of this Fire and Fill equation: preparing to fill roles long held by career civil servants with loyalists.

As Schedule G’s potential to expand hiring shows, the administration’s gutting of the workforce is not about “right-sizing” the federal bureaucracy — it’s about reshaping the civil service into a tool for unchecked control and removing safeguards that protect the public from the politicization of day-to-day government services. With Schedule G, the president now has a goody bag full of jobs he can hand out as favors like in the days of the Spoils System. And he has made no secret of expecting personal loyalty from his appointees over loyalty to the American people or the rule of law.

Read more: How civil service purges have played out around the world.

The Spoils System

You are forgiven if you can’t remember civics lessons on the Spoils System; it has been more than a century since that system of political patronage held our nation captive. In the 19th Century, particularly beginning in earnest under President Andrew Jackson and peaking after the Civil War, newly-elected presidents (often under pressure from senators with supporters to appease) would hand out federal jobs to campaign donors, volunteers, and operatives.

This system of hiring people for who they knew and not what they knew created predictable outcomes: corruption, self-dealing, incompetence, inefficiency, and a civil service with high levels of turnover and low levels of expertise. The inevitable scandals rocked presidential administrations. It also degraded the quality and reliability of public services, while increasing the cost of doing business in the United States.

Public outcry over this corrupt form of governance led to a bipartisan consensus that the Spoils System was rotten and had to go. Change began modestly in 1883 with the Pendleton Act, and Congress continued to strengthen the merit system over the next 142 years, most comprehensively with the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. We had one hundred forty-two years of progress away from the Spoils System.

Sometimes when policies shift, predicting hypothetical future harms is mere speculation. But this is not speculation. Here, we are not hypothesizing; Americans already had to learn the hard lesson that a spoils system is bad for the country. It benefits the few — the president, senators, and their cronies — at the expense of the public.

But it gets worse. This would not just be a return to the Spoils System of yesteryear, with its incompetent government functionaries and petty self-dealing. A return to the Spoils System now — in the context of an autocratic president who seems set on using the government to quash dissent, erode democratic norms, and serve his own interests — is exponentially more dangerous. As you know better than most, our federal government touches nearly every aspect of life here — from healthcare, to education, to clean food and water, to air and road safety. That institution, captured entirely by an army of loyalists willing to do an autocratic president’s bidding, could do tremendous harm.

Schedule G, explained

Creating Schedule G is not the only step this administration has taken on the “fill” side of the Fire and Fill strategy. Take the OPM Merit Hiring memo, which inserted loyalty questions into federal hiring, for example. However, Schedule G is a uniquely powerful tool in shifting the makeup of the civil service away from merit hires and toward political hires.

Read more: The “patriot” in the cubicle next door.

If you’re wondering what a “schedule” is and why it matters that there’s a new one, here’s some background: Some of the government’s excepted service employees are divided into categories, or “schedules,” that broadly define what kind of employee they are and what civil service protections they do (or don’t) enjoy. Presidents have statutory authority to create these schedules for various types of positions. Schedules A and B are for certain career employees; Schedule D relates to student hiring; and Schedule E is for Administrative Law Judges. Schedule F doesn’t exist; it was originally the name for what is now called Schedule Policy/Career.1

There is already a category for political hires: Schedule C was created in 1953 to distinguish political appointees from career employees; since then, the government has consistently filled only about 1,500 Schedule C political positions at a time, which already makes us a high outlier among similar countries.

This is where Trump’s new Schedule G comes in. Schedule C is subject to a handful of restrictions and transparency policies: Appointees are statutorily required to be identified publicly, and some agencies restrict the number of Schedule C appointees. Schedule G could provide a quick and easy way to flood the federal bureaucracy with more political loyalists. Recent OPM guidance doubles down on the political nature of these positions, requiring White House approval for any hire.

The administration has not yet given an indication as to its plans for Schedule G, including how many or what type of positions it intends to create. But the administration’s chaotic spree of layoffs and firings will leave the government understaffed in potentially critical areas. The administration may be hoping it can use Schedule G to backfill jobs formerly held by career employees with political loyalists. If the administration intends to use Schedule G appointees to do the government’s day-to-day functions, it will need worker bees, not executives — and a lot of them. In this scenario, Schedule G would further erode the merit system and the civil service’s ability to check abuses of executive power. A perverse revolving door of sorts would seek to usher career employees in Schedule Policy/Career out of the government and rotate in Schedule G political appointees.

Alternatively, the administration could use Schedule G to create “executive level” jobs with higher pay than is typical for civil servants. OPM has authority to classify positions like these above the GS-15 level, as well as authority to set their pay above the GS-15 level. In this scenario, in light of recent and planned RIFs and early-out incentives, Schedule G would create another wealth transfer: From rank-and-file civil servants on the general schedule to elites with sufficient connections to obtain a political appointment. Doling out plum positions with too-high salaries to politically-connected elites is the very definition of the “Spoils System” we abandoned long ago.

One more thing: Updates on civil service-related lawsuits

In focusing on the latter side of the Fire and Fill strategy, we do not mean to suggest that the illegal firings are a done deal. To the contrary, though the Supreme Court reached down to squash some early-stage relief that judges had rightfully given the civil service, those cases march forward.

The Supreme Court’s terse and unprecedented number of interventions in the early stages of lawsuits — including civil service suits — has sown confusion, even among lawyers and judges. In short, lower courts have been presented with actual evidence of the illegality of dismantling, firing, or reorganizations, and they have generally put a preliminary hold on the actions — temporarily pausing the destruction of agencies and removal of their employees. These pauses preserved the status quo while the cases could be litigated. In a number of civil service-related cases, the Supreme Court intervened early to lift these preliminary pauses — called preliminary injunctions.

One of these cases was AFGE v. Trump, a case Protect Democracy is helping to litigate, which challenged RIFs and reorganizations at over a dozen agencies. The Court has effectively paved the way for RIFs and reorganizations to continue while the cases continue to be litigated, and it has done so without real explanation or justification. And in the case concerning the dismantling of the Department of Education, it effectively did the same thing in no words at all.

Generally, these cases continue to be litigated — the Supreme Court did not end the RIF, reorganization, or dismantling cases. But the Supreme Court interference does unfortunately allow the government to move forward with its actions during the case, unless a judge again puts a stop to a specific act.

Resources and readings:

• Civil Service Strong - You Are Not Alone: A Resource Guide for Civil Servants Affected by the Supreme Court’s RIF Decision.

• Civil Service Strong - Additional RIF Resources.

• Partnership for Public Service Webinar - Navigating Reductions in Force: Updated guidance for federal employees.

• Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration - Snapshot Report showing that the IRS has lost 25,000 people, including 25% of its workforce. Warning lights are flashing red for next year’s filing season.

• FedsForward Needs Survey - Please fill out this survey to help create resources that support civil servants as they transition into the next stage of their careers.

• Don Moynihan - When you’re a star, the Supreme Court lets you do it.

• Walter M. Shaub Jr. - The Corruption Playbook.

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This publication should not be construed as legal advice on any specific facts or circumstances. The contents are intended for general information and educational purposes only, and should not be relied on as if it were advice about a particular fact situation. The distribution of this publication is not intended to create, and receipt of it does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship with Protect Democracy. This publication also contains hypertext links to information created and maintained by other entities. Protect Democracy does not control or guarantee the accuracy or completeness of this outside information, nor is the inclusion of a link to be intended as an endorsement of those outside sites.

Dear Civil Servant,

Do you have the “right kind” of patriotism to be hired into the Trump administration’s civil service? Sure, you’re an expert in your field and you’ve dedicated your career to public service — but can you write an essay on your favorite Trump administration executive order? And if you are hired, will you be deemed suitable to continue serving?

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We’ve written in the past about firings or workforce reduction mechanisms — RIFs, Schedule F, the probationary purge, etc. — but there are other levers of control over the civil service: hiring, retention, and enforcement (or not) of the civil service rules. The administration is now pulling those levers. And, though this administration may use the word “merit” in hiring, its actions suggest that ideological alignment and loyalty are key to its civil service hiring, retention, and firing decisions. The apparent goal is to hire and retain Feds based on their politics rather than their performance.

This newsletter will break down OPM’s new hiring memo and a proposed “suitability and fitness” rule that would give the administration broad power to decide who gets to become — or remain — a tenured civil servant. The good news is that a brief comment period is still open on the proposed suitability and fitness rule. More information is below, but you can comment here, now.

OPM’s “merit” hiring memo

On May 29, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) released a new memorandum titled “Merit Hiring Plan” that creates a set of new rules for federal hiring processes and greatly expands the role of political appointees and OPM in those processes. This is in line with the accelerating transformation of OPM into a tool of centralized control for the Trump administration.

Coded — or at least, loaded — language

The memo’s language must be viewed in the context of the administration’s broader effort to politicize the civil service. Seizing political control of governmental functions that should be free of politics is a common tactic of aspiring autocrats; it’s practically the first chapter of any authoritarian playbook.

Some phrases in the memo are overtly troubling, like the requirement that federal workers “faithfully serve the Executive Branch.” Civil servants take an oath to uphold the Constitution — not the dominant political structure and its insiders.

Other phrases in the memo — like “passionate about the ideals of our American republic” and “patriotic Americans” — would be unproblematic in some contexts. After all, our federal public servants and our military service members are truly among the most patriotic people in the country. But in the Trump administration, that same language is loaded with the intimations of a very specific political worldview. It certainly does not reflect the American values of constraining governmental power, preventing the misuse of authority to target political opponents and dissidents, or being able to trust public servants to reject unlawful orders.

Political viewpoint questions: Illegal loyalty tests?

The memo adds a new screening mechanism for job applicants that has the hallmarks of a political loyalty test. Going forward, each new job posting for positions at the GS-5 level and above will ask applicants to write essays on topics including:

How would you help advance the President’s Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant Executive Orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.

How has your commitment to the Constitution and the founding principles of the

United States inspired you to pursue this role within the Federal government? Provide a concrete example from professional, academic, or personal experience.

If you’re a microbiologist, food inspector, or firefighter, which of the Federalist Papers could you possibly quote to explain the origin of your career choice? The obvious answer is that the response doesn’t matter, not exactly anyway. The public is rightly suspicious that asking these questions is just a ploy to solicit information about an applicant’s political leanings.

Beyond the substance of these questions, the process itself also is infused with the judgment of political appointees on the ideological beliefs of applicants. For example, the memo provides: “Agency leadership, or designee(s), should conduct a final ‘executive interview’ to confirm organizational fit and commitment to American ideals.”

You’ve undoubtedly spotted the issue: Who decides what “commitment to . . . the founding principles” and “American ideals” looks like? This country’s founders rose up against tyranny, but those same founders reached the three-fifths compromise; which of those “founding principles” is the OPM memo talking about? This is either a requirement too vague to be meaningful, or it is not vague at all — it is a very clear message to job seekers that the administration wants to hire people who are willing to signal their loyalty to the administration’s ideology.

These sorts of tests for political ideology are at odds with the Civil Service Reform Act and constitutional protections; they should not be legal. In a New York Times guest essay, “Why on earth should air traffic controllers be pro-Trump?” legal scholars Erwin Chemerinsky and Catherine Fisk argue that the memo “creates an unconstitutional political test for federal hiring” and is “at heart . . . about viewpoint discrimination” implicating First Amendment freedoms.

And policy experts — even those who have called for reform of the federal hiring process — have called out how the OPM memo departs from the policy of employing civil servants based on their merit. Public policy professor Don Moynihan wrote on his Substack: “The most meaningful effect of the policy will be to make it easier to hire unqualified candidates based on their political loyalties to the Trump administration, placing them into the career civil service.”

Analysis by the Niskanen Center warns: “Mandatory training and essay questions tied to the current administration’s executive orders — and explicit political sign‑off on certain hiring actions — risk blurring the firewall between career professionals and partisan appointees.”

OPM’s new proposed rule: “Suitability and Fitness”

In a move last week that buried a tectonic shift in extremely wonky and technical language, OPM published a new proposed rule titled “Suitability and Fitness.” Among other things, the rule would create a new method of removing current federal employees — by OPM, for broad and vague reasons, with little oversight. Suitability and fitness regulations have generally been used to assess whether applicants or new hires were suitable for federal employment, but OPM proposes reshaping them into a tool of removal or other discipline for current civil servants. The proposed rule:

• Circumvents the system Congress created for removal of federal employees in the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) — which includes robust appeal rights — by authorizing OPM to take “suitability” actions based on conduct occurring after an employee has already been hired.

• Expands OPM’s reach by allowing OPM — not your employing agency — to make suitability determinations that result in firing current federal employees. For many civil servants, this would mean that the administration’s centralized HR agency could have you fired without the normal civil service protections.

• Creates opportunities for politicized enforcement by creating broad and vague factors that may be used for negative suitability or fitness determinations.

Sidestepping the CSRA: An additional tool for removing civil servants

Suitability regulations aren’t new, but this proposed rule would expand their use so dramatically that it would essentially create a new system for removing (firing) federal employees based on allegations of misconduct committed after they were hired — and it would limit civil service protections that empower the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) to overturn unwarranted terminations of a competitive service employee.

Historically, agencies have assessed the suitability of job applicants and new hires; being found “unsuitable” mostly meant that you would not be hired (though the government did, in rare cases, conclude later that an employee was not actually suitable at the time of hiring). When the government has wanted to remove a competitive service employee for alleged misconduct that occurred while he was a federal employee, it has had to follow the requirements laid out in Chapter 75 of the CSRA. The CSRA provides protections for federal employees, in service of maintaining the merit system. Among those protections is a right to appeal the removal to the MSPB, which can overturn the employment action.

The proposed rule would give OPM the authority to make suitability determinations and take suitability actions against certain employees based on conduct occurring while they are a federal employee. Suitability actions can include cancellation of eligibility for employment, removal from the civil service (i.e., firing), cancellation of eligibility to return to federal service employment, and debarment. 5 CFR 731.101. While a competitive service employee could appeal a suitability action (i.e., an action based on a suitability determination) to the MSPB, the MSPB would lack the power to overturn OPM’s action. The MSPB could only overturn some or all of the grounds for the suitability determination, and send the case back to the agency to determine whether the action was still appropriate. 5 C.F.R. 731.501. In the proposed rule, OPM states that this suitability process applies to competitive service employees, career SES members, and any excepted service employees whose positions permit noncompetitive conversion to the competitive service.

If the government wanted to accuse certain civil servants of misconduct and fire them, it would have two choices: A robust process mandated by Congress with protections for the employee designed to insulate the civil service from political pressures (Chapter 75 of the CSRA) — or a suitability process of OPM’s creation with fewer employee protections that is subject to very little oversight.

Which do you think it will choose more often?

An expanded role, and lots of discretion, for OPM

OPM’s proposed rule would establish new factors that would support a negative suitability determination. These new factors are broad. How broad? Misplace-a-stapler broad! Get-stopped-for-jaywalking broad! One new proposed factor is the “theft, misuse or negligent loss of government resources and equipment.” Other factors include:

• Refusal to certify compliance with, and/or adhere to, non-disclosure agreements;

• Refusal to furnish testimony as required under the Civil Service Rules;

• Failure to comply with generally applicable legal obligations, including timely filing of tax returns;

• Failure to comply with any provision that would preclude Federal service, including citizenship or nationality requirements.

OPM states that it anticipates it will use these new factors to turn half of all firings into suitability cases, which could gut the MSPB’s power to protect employees. If OPM now serves as an influential arm for enacting the president’s preferences, then this rule affords it more decisionmaking power to remove or retain certain career employees.

This rule threatens the neutral delivery of government services to the public by giving political appointees the power to label civil servants “unsuitable” and purge them for a very broad range of reasons with little oversight or recourse.

That’s why it’s so critical to point out the insidious nature of this proposed regulation — and there’s a way for you to do that right now!

Comment *now* on the proposed rule

When one comment window closes, another one opens. The last time OPM published a proposed rule affecting civil servants, you showed up. And you have the chance to do it all over again: Comments for OPM’s new proposed rule, “Suitability and Fitness,” are due by July 18, 2025 at 11:59 PM EST. You can submit comments here.

A few reminders about commenting:

• OPM is required to consider your comments when issuing a final rule.

• Your comments are strongest when they provide credible, relevant, and detailed information about why this suitability rule damages hiring and retention practices that ensure a nonpartisan and merit-based civil service.

• You have the option to comment anonymously. However, providing your name can lend context and credibility to what you say.

We strongly encourage you to comment on this proposed rule. So many civil servants leveraged their expertise — amassed from years of public service — to comment on OPM’s proposed “Schedule F” rule (aka “Schedule Policy/Career”): “Improving Performance, Accountability and Responsiveness in the Civil Service”. This effort from current and former Feds, public interest organizations, and concerned citizens resulted in an unprecedented number of public comments (about 40,500) submitted to OPM.

Two former civil servants created a handy website breaking down those comments. According to their analysis, of the 30,000 or so comments they’ve analyzed, 22,642 unique comments were submitted against the rule and only a meager 224 unique comments were submitted in support of it. This is a testament to the power of collective action from those within the civil servant community. Thank you to everyone who raised their voices to speak out against the dangerous consequences of Schedule P/C.

To learn more about commenting on the proposed Suitability rule:

• Read Democracy Forward and Protect Democracy’s primer on the proposed rule.

• Review our explainer on “What Makes an Effective Public Comment.”

• Use our new and improved templates for Individual Commentators and Organizational Commentators.

Resources and readings:

• Democracy Forward’s Impacted Federal Workers Data Collection: We need your help — please use this portal to share any information about how RIFs and the threat of Schedule P/C have affected your employment and/or your agency.

• Governing for Impact’s Administrative Procedure Act Library — Resources for challenging executive branch action

• Federal Employees and Contractors Oral History Project — an opportunity to share your experiences and preserve your story

• The Washington Post — Trump administration races to fix a big mistake: DOGE fired too many people

• Jen Pahlka — What DOGE didn’t do

• Langston Hughes — Let America Be American Again

This publication should not be construed as legal advice on any specific facts or circumstances. The contents are intended for general information and educational purposes only, and should not be relied on as if it were advice about a particular fact situation. The distribution of this publication is not intended to create, and receipt of it does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship with Protect Democracy. This publication also contains hypertext links to information created and maintained by other entities. Protect Democracy does not control or guarantee the accuracy or completeness of this outside information, nor is the inclusion of a link to be intended as an endorsement of those outside sites.

Dear Civil Servant,

“That’s not how it’s supposed to work.”

As the Administration has attempted to reshape the federal bureaucracy through mass layoffs and the shuttering of agencies and offices, we’ve heard this again and again from civil servants. It turns out, many courts agree: This is not how the large-scale dismantling, shrinking, and reorganization of the federal bureaucracy is supposed to work. The president alone doesn’t have the power to restructure or dismantle the federal government. That power largely belongs to Congress.

But what do the legal battles mean for you? We understand that the litigation over RIFs (reductions in force, or layoffs) and agency closures is hard to follow. With some amazing partners, we’ve been helping litigate AFGE et al. v. Trump et al., where the judge recently issued a preliminary injunction putting RIFs on hold at 22 agencies. This newsletter will break down that ruling and will highlight a handful of other cases where courts have stopped — for now — mass layoffs and dismantling of agencies.

Before we dive in, a thank you: Civil servants stepping up and sharing their stories have been critical to those cases’ early successes. And if you have a story to share now, there’s a place for that, too.

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FAQs: AFGE et al. v. Trump et al. (or “the Big RIF case”)

What’s this case about?

Executive Order 14210, titled “Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative” says that it “commences a critical transformation of the Federal bureaucracy.” Together with a memorandum issued by OMB and OPM, the Executive Order directs agencies to plan for large-scale RIFs and reorganizations by submitting Agency RIF and Reorganization Plans (ARRPs) to OMB and OPM for approval. In this lawsuit, the Plaintiffs put forth a significant amount of evidence showing that the president’s centralized agencies (OMB, OPM, and DOGE) were calling the shots, and that agencies had started to RIF huge numbers of federal employees as a result—with more extensive cuts planned.

Along with co-counsel, we have been fighting in court to stop the RIFs, reorganizations, and dismantling of federal agencies pursuant to this Executive Order. A few weeks ago, a federal court in California temporarily paused some of the RIFs nationwide. Late last Thursday night, the court issued what’s known as a preliminary injunction, more formally ordering all of the agency defendants in the case (listed below) to press pause on RIFs, reorganizations, and certain dismantling activities. Unlike some other cases, this case was not against one or a handful of agencies — it was against 22 agencies. (That’s why we tend to call the case “Big RIF”).

Does this case affect my agency?

If you work at one of the following agencies, yes:

• USDA

• Commerce

• Energy

• HHS

• HUD

• Interior

• Labor

• State

• Treasury

• Transportation

• VA

• AmeriCorps

• Peace Corps

• EPA

• GSA

• NLRB

• NSF

• SBA

• SSA

Those agencies were named as defendants in the lawsuit, so the judge’s ruling applies to them. The ruling covers these agencies across the country (not just in California, where the case was filed). OMB, DOGE, and OPM were also named as defendants in the lawsuit, which describes them as the centralized agencies driving decisionmaking.

What does it mean that the judge “issued a preliminary injunction”? What does that do?

A preliminary injunction is a court’s way of hitting pause on the status quo while a case is litigated. Lawsuits can take time, and when the claims look relatively strong — likely to succeed on the merits, among a few other considerations — a judge can temporarily stop the challenged action during the lawsuit to give the court some time to sort out the legal issues. That’s what happened here: The judge had previously issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) that hit pause on RIFs and reorganizations for two weeks, but this pause is supposed to last longer.

Here, the court’s preliminary injunction orders the defendants to stop implementing Executive Order 14210. That means existing RIFs are paused, no new RIFS can happen, and inter-agency reorganizations of functions must stop, among other things.

OK, I get that the RIFs and reorganizations are paused, but what exactly does my agency have to stop doing?

In general, all covered agencies have to stop implementing Executive Order 14210. This means they need to:

• Stop any further implementation of the Agency RIF and Reorganization Plans (ARRPs);

• Stop executing any existing RIF notices. This means agencies should not effectuate the final separation of employees via RIFs;

• Stop issuing further RIF notices;

• Stop placing employees on administrative leave, insofar as they are doing so to implement the RIF EO; and/or

• Stop transferring functions or programs between the covered agencies.

Think of it as a “stop work” order for the machinery that was working to effectuate the RIFs.

OMB and OPM must also stop approving, disapproving, or certifying ARRPs. Those agencies must also stop waiving statutorily-mandated RIF notice periods (formally and informally, expressly, and indirectly), and DOGE must stop ordering agencies to cut programs or staff in conjunction with implementing RIFs.

What *can* the agencies do?

The court was pretty clear. Agencies can continue to (1) engage in internal planning and (2) seek legislative approval for their plans. Specifically, the Order says that it “shall not limit federal agency defendants from presenting reorganization proposals for legislative approval or engaging in their own internal planning activities without the involvement of OMB, OPM, or DOGE, provided that they do not implement any of the prohibited actions...”

Are people at those agencies who received RIF notices… unfired? Are they still on administrative leave? How does this all work?

This answer is complicated! Some of what the court ordered is what’s called “backward looking relief,” which means it is an attempt to undo something that’s been done. Here, the court told the defendants they needed to (1) rescind any RIF notices already issued pursuant to the EO and (2) bring people back to work from administrative leave.

There’s a big “but” attached to these rulings: The court “stayed” — paused — its own rulings on backward-looking relief until the government’s anticipated appeals of the preliminary injunction are over. The court expressed concern that if it allowed its ruling to take effect, but then if its decision were undermined on appeal, federal workers would get unnecessarily bounced back and forth. If appeals courts agree with the district court that the preliminary injunction was appropriate, the backward-looking relief will go into effect. For now, the government could decide to keep people on administrative leave who were already on administrative leave or to reinstate them.

But won’t the government just appeal this?

Oh yes, they already have — immediately after the judge’s ruling, the government appealed the decision to the Ninth Circuit. But unless and until the Ninth Circuit or Supreme Court disagrees with the preliminary injunction, it is still valid.

As we’ve said before, we wish we could provide more certainty in these uncertain times. The Ninth Circuit docket is here, if you want to track it more closely.

I’m interested in the law nerd stuff! What was the legal basis for the judge’s decision?

The legal basis for the decision is the separation of powers — the principle that we have three co-equal branches of government, each with its own powers that can’t be usurped by another branch. As the court summarized:

The President has the authority to seek changes to executive branch agencies, but he must do so in lawful ways and, in the case of large-scale reorganizations, with the cooperation of the legislative branch.

What role did civil servants play in securing this preliminary win?

Your stories shed light on why allowing RIFs to continue harms not only federal workers, but all of the American people who depend on your public services. While the government put forth no evidence at all in the Big RIF case (AFGE v. Trump), the Plaintiffs amassed well over a thousand pages of accounts of how the RIFs and reorganizations worked and what effects they had. Much of that evidence came from civil servants.

For example, the court’s order cited stories about the projected closure of a CDC Pittsburgh office that researches health hazards for miners, retirees in need of assistance who have struggled to speak with employees at Social Security Administration, and rural farmers unable to reach USDA workers about their loans or construction projects. Civil servants speaking out also bolstered public reporting on RIFs and reorganizations, which the case relied upon to shore up its evidence of harm.

What if my agency wasn’t a defendant in the Big RIF Case?

If your agency is not listed as a defendant in the Big RIF case, there may be other litigation specifically aimed at stopping attempts to dismantle it. Though Executive Order 14210 is aimed at general reorganization across the government, some agencies have been the subjects of targeted Executive Orders. Often, though not always, parties sued to stop the effects of those Executive Orders. If you work at one of the following agencies, there may be litigation targeted specifically at your place of work. An evergreen reminder that things can change quickly in litigation. We’ve linked to the court docket for each case, which we encourage you to check:

• Department of Education

  • State of New York v. McMahon: On May 22, a judge issued a preliminary injunction ordering the government to hit pause on its RIFs and related actions at the Department of Education.

• United States Institute of Peace

  • United States Institute of Peace v. Jackson: On May 19, a judge granted summary judgment to USIP, holding that the president does not have the power to remove USIP board members. On May 23, she denied the government’s motion to stay (pause) that ruling pending appeal.

• Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA), and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services (FMCS)

  • State of Rhode Island v. Trump: On May 6, a judge issued a preliminary injunction, halting layoffs and funding cuts at IMLS, MBDA, and FMCS

  • American Library Association v. Sonderling et al.: The American Library Association and others sued separately challenging efforts to dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services. On May 1, a judge issued a TRO temporarily pausing restructuring; that TRO has been extended through May 29, 2025.

• Americorps

  • State of Maryland v. Corporation for National and Community Service - Plaintiffs have asked the court for a preliminary injunction; there’s no ruling as of this writing.

• National Endowment for the Humanities

  • American Council of Learned Societies v. McDonald - Plaintiffs have asked the court for a preliminary injunction; no ruling as of this writing.

• National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health

  • National Nurses United v. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. - The case is at an early stage; there is no court decision yet.

Have info you want to share?

From Day 1, we’ve known that civil servants speaking up and speaking out would be critical to preserving our federal government and its critical programs and services. You’ve been through a lot, but don’t let anyone tell you your voice doesn’t matter. It does.

Contribute your information to aid efforts at pushing back: Our friends at Democracy Forward are collecting information about the scope and magnitude of impact of the Trump administration's employment actions taken against federal workers. This data will be used to aid and inform our response to these actions, including pursuing potential legal remedies. None of your personal information will be disclosed without your permission. If your employment has been impacted by a RIF, or if your job has been reclassified to Schedule Policy/Career ("Schedule PC,” formerly referred to as Schedule F), you can share your information here.

Noncompliance information in the Big RIF Case: If you read the FAQ section on AFGE et al v. Trump et al. above and thought to yourself, “hey, I don’t think my agency is following these rules,” then we’ve set up a way for you to get in touch: You can email AFGEvTrump_info@protectdemocracy.org and let us know what you’re seeing on the ground. (We apologize that, due to volume, we aren’t responding to each email.)

There’s still time to comment on Schedule PC. Our last newsletter encouraged you to submit comments in the Schedule Policy Career (Schedule PC, formerly known as Schedule F) rulemaking. OPM has extended the deadline for comments until June 7.

What we’re reading

• Information from the Partnership for Public Service’s FedSupport Hub. Consider registering for the panel today (May 28) at 6:00 Eastern, What to know about RIFs, relocation and reassignment.

• Partnership for Public Service’s 100 Harms in 100 Days

• Who is Government? A collection of insightful essays about public service is now a published book.

• Being a mom in the federal government wasn’t easy. Trump made it “impossible.“

This publication should not be construed as legal advice on any specific facts or circumstances. The contents are intended for general information and educational purposes only, and should not be relied on as if it were advice about a particular fact situation. The distribution of this publication is not intended to create, and receipt of it does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship with Protect Democracy. This publication also contains hypertext links to information created and maintained by other entities. Protect Democracy does not control or guarantee the accuracy or completeness of this outside information, nor is the inclusion of a link to be intended as an endorsement of those outside sites.

Dear civil servant,

As civil servants have been debating whether to try to stay in their jobs or accept one of the government’s “incentives” for walking away, many have asked: “If I stay, what institution am I staying in?” The administration is trying to change the federal bureaucracy so rapidly and dramatically — its size, its rules, and how it serves the country. You probably wonder where this train is headed, and whether it makes more sense to leave now or stay and serve in the new version of a “civil service”: a lean cabal of loyalists subject to the president’s every whim. We’re writing to tell you that you are not paranoid, that this is in fact the administration’s vision for the federal bureaucracy — but that the game is not over.

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We’re fighting back alongside a broad coalition that’s standing up for the federal civil service, and this newsletter describes one concrete way you can add your voice to the efforts to save the civil service.

The looming “big threat”: RIFs

In normal times, RIFs — Reductions In Force — are how federal agencies lawfully do layoffs when they have budget issues or must confront changing circumstances that necessitate a reorganization. A RIF is a tool that has been responsibly used by many agencies over the many decades.

But we are in the midst of a campaign to unlawfully abuse RIF procedures in order to reshape the federal bureaucracy to fit the Trump Administration’s vision for it, cutting services that people rely on while repurposing departments to advance the Administration’s views. The lawsuit we filed Monday alongside a coalition of outstanding partners and plaintiffs, explains that our Constitution gives Congress the power to reorganize and deconstruct federal agencies through massive reductions in force, and that the President’s Executive Order 14210 (“Implementing the President’s ‘‘Department of Government Efficiency’’ Workforce Optimization Initiative”) and agencies’ implementation of it violates the Constitution’s separation of powers principle. You can read the complaint here.

A broad coalition of plaintiffs is standing up on behalf of the civil service and the work you do. They realize your value and the incredible value of your work. The plaintiffs include cities and counties across the country, organizations that represent everyone from farmers to scientists to veterans, and large labor unions. Together, they’ve sued President Trump, OPM, OMB, DOGE, and well over a dozen agencies where the RIF process is playing out to put a stop to the illegal destruction of the federal government as we know it.

Make your voice heard: public commenting on proposed regulations

If the RIF threat is a wrecking ball — devastatingly destructive, but at least you see it coming — the proposed changes to civil service regulations are more like a slow gas leak — silent but equally damaging.

One proposed rule, “Improving Performance, Accountability and Responsiveness in the Civil Service,” would create a new category of civil servant: Schedule Policy/Career (a revived “Schedule F”). Schedule Policy/Career civil servants would have none of the safeguards that actually protect federal employees from politicized firings, demotions, or abuse. The new rule would also allow existing civil servant positions to be involuntarily moved into this category, thus stripping them of their protections.

Alongside this rule, the federal government has sneakily proposed changes to a regulation about civil servants’ “suitability” for their roles — giving OPM wildly expansive power to decide when employees are unfit, based on expansive criteria, with no meaningful opportunity for the employee to challenge the decision. We’re seeing a pattern here: This administration is trying to create a system where it can fire federal employees, particularly those who dare stand up for facts, evidence, and the law even when they are inconvenient to the politicians, without challenge or question.

Here’s one way to take action right now. If you are a current or former federal employee, or a concerned member of the public, submit a comment on the proposed Schedule P/C rule. (We will let you know when the similar comment window is open for the suitability rule described above.) If you oppose the creation of Schedule P/C, say that! And say why. The government agency is required to consider these comments. As current or former civil servants (or those who have relied on them), your comments can provide credible, relevant, and detailed information about the dangers of politicizing the federal civil service. Those comments could also build a record of opinion that would help in any future litigation against Schedule P/C.

Yes, it might seem intimidating, but this whole process of commenting on regulations is intended to solicit feedback from the public. And we’ve broken it down for you:

1. Attend Democracy Forward and Protect Democracy’s upcoming webinar “Schedule F-P/C” Rulemaking and the Civil Service” on May 1, 2025 from 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EST. You can RSVP here.

2. Review Democracy Forward’s one-pager on the proposed rule.

3. Review our explainer on “What Makes an Effective Public Comment”

4. If you are an individual person, review our “how-to guide” on submitting Schedule P/C comments here.

5. If you are a leader of an organization, business, or coalition group, review our “how-to guide” on Schedule P/C comments here.

If you fear reprisal for submitting comments, you should know that you have the option to comment anonymously. However, providing your name can lend credibility to what you say.

Deciding how to stay

Some civil servants don’t feel like they have a real choice about whether to stay or leave; you need the paycheck and the health insurance, and getting a new job isn’t always simple. Deciding to leave can be an act of courage; deciding to stay can be an act of hope.

If you decide to stay, you can also decide how you want to stay: Do you have any personal red lines? Decide what they are and how you’d respond if they were crossed. Do you have any heroes you want to emulate? Anyone whose grit or character in times of adversity you admire? We have plenty — the whistleblower at the NLRB who saw something and said something about a possible serious DOGE data breach; the university and law firms that are using their power and wealth to stand up against the administration’s pressure while so many of their peers have caved; and participants in the 1,400 plus peaceful protests held at state capitols, federal buildings, parks, city halls, and congressional offices across the country on April 6, 2025 and beyond.

Resources

• Explainers on RIFs from Lawfare, Congressional Research Service, and Fedweek.

• Read Government Executive’s detailed reporting on the RIFs affecting federal agencies here.

• Explainers on New Schedule P/C Rule from Federal Workers Rights and Government Executive

• Civil Service Strong’s Fact Sheet: Understanding Suitability & Fitness

• Rise Up: Federal Workers Legal Defense Network - Learn more about this website launched to help unemployed civil servants find new jobs and pro-bono representation here.

• Former Gov - A platform to connect former government employees and military professionals with those who could benefit from their experience, knowledge, and insight.

• Silenced Science Stories - An illustrated series of portraits and stories of scientific experts whose work is being affected by federal budget cuts and mass firings.

• TheImpactProject.org - provides objective, transparent, and open-source data to help explain how federal policies, funding, and workforce changes affect our communities. Their tool, the Impact Map, shows the local impact of federal workforce, funding, and policy decisions.

This publication should not be construed as legal advice on any specific facts or circumstances. The contents are intended for general information and educational purposes only, and should not be relied on as if it were advice about a particular fact situation. The distribution of this publication is not intended to create, and receipt of it does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship with Protect Democracy. This publication also contains hypertext links to information created and maintained by other entities. Protect Democracy does not control or guarantee the accuracy or completeness of this outside information, nor is the inclusion of a link to be intended as an endorsement of those outside sites.

Dear Civil Servant,

We are dedicating this letter to breaking down the details of the attacks on civil servants while not losing sight of the big picture. Since day one, the Trump administration has unleashed a sweeping volley of executive orders, which have triggered cascading chaos. It is easy to focus on the madness of it all, but there is a method at work; what is unfolding is merely an endgame for what comes next. Here, we provide updates on past and future firings, ongoing litigation, some new resources, and our read on what the big picture means for you.

Probationary purge: Headed to SCOTUS

What is happening: Thousands of federal workers in the probationary stage of employment were summarily fired, many for “performance issues” that they assert — and at least one court seemed to agree — the government knew “good and well that is based on a lie.”

Legal challenges: These firings were challenged in two large cases: one in federal court in Maryland, and one in California. The judges in both of those cases ruled that the firings were likely illegal and ordered that the government reinstate thousands of federal workers. Though the government has taken some steps toward reinstatement, they have also appealed the cases— recently, all the way up to the Supreme Court, asking the high court to pause the orders of the California federal judge while the case is litigated further.

RIFs: A slow rollout and the likelihood of legal challenges

What is happening: In February, Trump issued an Executive Order that, among other things, instructed agencies to begin Reductions in Force (RIFs), which is the federal government’s term for large-scale layoffs. Those RIFs did not happen overnight, in large part because conducting a RIF is a complex, multi-step process. However, around mid-March agencies started to submit RIF plans and issue RIF notices. These steps are not all publicized, so it can be hard to figure out exactly what’s going on, but Government Executive has a good tracker of the information that we do know. The size of the RIFs seems to vary from agency to agency, with some agencies aiming to lay off under 10% of their workforce and others aiming for a much higher percentage. Many details remain unclear, like what will happen to the few thousand Department of Education employees in light of Trump’s Executive Order aimed at dismantling it.

Legal challenges: Though the government did not call it a RIF, the judge in Maryland who ordered thousands of probationary employees to be reinstated did so because he found that the firings actually qualified as RIFs — yet they did not follow the technical requirements for carrying out a RIF. Take this as a sign that RIFs can be done the right way or the wrong way, and that courts have some ability to hold the government accountable for violating the RIF rules.

The RIFs are not yet in full swing, so it’s unsurprising that there have not yet been many legal challenges. But just this week a group of schools, unions, and the American Association of University Professors has sued to stop the dismantling of the Department of Education — which includes both a challenge to Trump’s Executive Order and the RIFs at that agency.

Other attacks on the civil service

Targeted firings: The administration has used targeted firings to remove leaders at DOJ’s Executive Office of Immigration Litigation, AUSAs who prosecuted Capitol siege cases and FBI officials who investigated them, prosecutors who worked on investigations of Trump (the Jack Smith team), and a grab bag of additional senior career officials, including the Pardon Attorney, the head of DOJ Office of Information Policy, the head of the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility, and others.

Further consolidation of OPM’s power: Trump recently issued an Executive Order that gives OPM final say over the “suitability determinations” (decisions whether a federal employee is fit to continue being a federal employee) that happen before some federal employees are placed in more permanent positions (for example, after a probationary period). This takes that authority from the employee’s actual agency, marking another big move towards the consolidation and centralization of power over civil servants. If this reminds you of Schedule F—yeah, us too. This administration is trying to unravel rules and laws that were meant to ensure civil servants are professionals serving the American people, not loyalists serving partisans.

The endgame

In terminating employees, the administration has proudly and routinely ignored the law, claiming — among other things — that Article II grants it a heretofore unrevealed power to trample Congress’ authority to organize agencies and their functions. Article II is the part of the Constitution that gives the presidency its powers. By saying ”Article II” gives Trump (and his agency heads) the power to fire whomever they want, Trump is saying his presidential power outweighs other authorities — here, the Civil Service Reform Act that Congress passed. Most importantly and troublingly, this is an attempt by the president to steal authority from the courts and Congress — two co-equal branches of government — no less the American people.

And that right there is the whole game.

If the president’s power over the federal bureaucracy is absolute, as Trump asserts, despite the laws intended to protect you, then your job is not safe. If this view of Article II triumphs, there’s not much the president can’t do to the civil service. More arbitrary firings? RIFs? Mass layoffs? Canceling whole agencies? Yes, yes, yes, yes.

You, dear civil servants, are also the canaries in the coal mine. If he can claim Article II authority to do all of these things to you and to the life-sustaining programs that you spent years running, he may also claim Article II authority to do terrible things to people across this country. Of course, he already has.

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Resources

• Check out these resources for helping you navigate unemployment and career transitions, including:

  • Upcoming webinars from Partnership for Public Service, including “How are resumes evaluated in the private sector?” and “What insights can I learn from executive search recruiters”

  • Federal Resource Directory

  • The Route House’s FiredFED Resources

  • Federal Employee Education and Assistance Fund’s Layoff Loans Program and National and Local Informational Resources

  • Georgetown’s Federal Workforce Transition Resources

  • AFGE Union’s Toolbox

  • Feds Forward Career Resources

• Hear from real former feds across agencies:

  • Grassroots Comedy, a 501C3 nonprofit based in DC that works at the intersection of comedy and social justice completed short "mini-documentaries" highlighting the incredible work that Feds do every day. Three brave folks came forward to be interviewed: Ian (FDA), Van (USAID), and John (DOL)

  • The New York Times, They Were the Watchdogs - Hear from 16 Fired Inspector Generals

• Stay informed on complex issues with explainers & issue briefs:

  • New explainer from Protect Democracy and Walter M. Shaub Jr.: The Mass Removal of Probationary Federal Employees is an Unlawful Reduction in Force

  • Protect Democracy’s fact-sheet concerning Authoritarian Attacks on Science

  • Protect Democracy’s new report on The Myth of Presidential Impoundment Power

  • This new explainer on the Basics of Anti-Discrimination Law for Federal Employees

  • DOGE and Government Data Privacy Explainer

  • Governing for Impact’s (GFI) issue briefs on legal challenges to Agency relocation, Agency closure, and Schedule F. Read more of GFI’s work here.

What we’re reading

• ProPublica: How a Push to Amend the Constitution Could Help Trump Expand Presidential Power

• Time: The Historic Dangers of Politicizing Our Civil Service

• Jen Pahlka, What Musk Doesn’t Understand About the Civil Service

• Bree Fram, Deny Who We Are or Harm Our Country?

• Robert Frost, Fire and Ice

This publication should not be construed as legal advice on any specific facts or circumstances. The contents are intended for general information and educational purposes only, and should not be relied on as if it were advice about a particular fact situation. The distribution of this publication is not intended to create, and receipt of it does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship with Protect Democracy. This publication also contains hypertext links to information created and maintained by other entities. Protect Democracy does not control or guarantee the accuracy or completeness of this outside information, nor is the inclusion of a link to be intended as an endorsement of those outside sites.

Dear civil servant,

That trauma they said they wanted to cause you? It would only be natural if you're feeling that at this point. You can’t escape thinking about your current or former federal job. But you are also trying to figure out what comes next or settle into a new position. You may feel the pounding of each news story about the dismantling of a program you helped build or a country you helped defend, and at the same time you may feel the pressure to carry on as if everything is normal.

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And with all the litigation over federal employees’ rights and the dismantling of our government, it likely has been hard to keep up with the courts. Which is why in this letter, we are offering a five bullet-point summary of recent decisions by the courts and adjudicators that affect the civil service. (If Elon gets to have his “five bullet points,” you deserve to have some, too).

But first, some resources.

New resources:

• DC’s Public Service Career Hub. Helps former civil servants find new employment within the district.

• Fairfax County (VA) Federal Workforce Resource Hub. Information on employment, healthcare, financial help, mental health, support for veterans, community involvement, and reaching out to elected representatives, among other topics.

• @fednews.bsky.social shares news stories that affect civil servants.

• Resources for researchers and scholars under threat in the United States: The National Academies offer a repository of resources for academics to respond to targeted attacks.

• New information about class action appeals at the MSPB challenging the mass terminations of probationary and trial employees. Thus far, class action appeals have been filed for employees at the FDIC, Dept. of Interior, USDA, VA, DHS, and EPA, with more to come — likely including Treasury and DoT.

• Updated FAQ on probationary and trial period mass terminations. From Civil Service Strong.

• Understanding impoundments. Resources that explain why the presidential impoundment of federal funds is unlawful, why courts can step in to remedy impoundments, and how to track apportionments in real time.

• Sign up to contribute an oral history of your experience as a federal worker during this period. The Organization of American Historians, the largest professional society dedicated to United States history, is working with former FDA historian, Dr. Jason Chernesky, to create an oral history documenting the experiences of federal workers during this difficult period.

• Notes on the Crises. Provides comprehensive reporting on the administration’s attempts to access sensitive information through the U.S. Treasury’s payment systems, and requests for information about how some of these systems work.

• Useful trackers:

  • CNN provides updates on the state of play in federal agencies, including “the percentage of workers impacted at select agencies, reactions from fired workers and more context about the size of the federal workforce across all 50 states.”

  • Just Security tracks legal challenges to Trump Administration actions.

  • The New York Times tracker includes a specific section on “Civil Servant Firings” with updated information on the status of legal challenges.

  • UCSD helpfully tracks the different trackers.

• Pre-Trump CDC website now available. Archivists recreated the Pre-Trump CDC website, and are choosing to host it in Europe.

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What did courts and adjudicators do the past two weeks?

Even as judges face threats to their lives and their courthouses, and agency adjudicators themselves navigate ongoing threats to their independence, they remain busy adjudicating the rights of federal employees.

The relevant cases are traveling through the courts at different speeds. Keeping up can feel impossible. (Though we find Nick Bednar’s Bluesky account indispensable in this regard.)

To help, we offer five bullet points describing what the judiciary and agency adjudicators accomplished over the past two weeks as it relates to federal workers:

• Paused DOGE access to federal employees’ sensitive data: On February 24, a federal district judge in Maryland issued a temporary restraining order directing the Department of Education and OPM to stop accessing federal workers’ sensitive and personal data information. You can learn more about Protect Democracy’s efforts to stop illegal disclosure of personal information here.

• Temporarily reinstated six probationary employees: On February 25, the Merit System Protection Board (MSPB), an administrative tribunal within the executive branch, paused the firing of six former probationary employees, ordering them reinstated for 45 days so the Office of Special Counsel (OSC, also within the executive branch) can investigate whether their terminations were lawful. At the time, the head of OSC was Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger. On March 5, judges on the D.C. Circuit allowed the president’s termination of the Special Counsel to go forward at least temporarily and Dellinger subsequently announced that he will drop the legal challenge to his termination. The new Special Counsel appears to be VA Secretary Doug Collins — a move that the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) says raises serious conflict concerns and is likely to chill whistleblowing at the VA.

• Temporarily restricted OPM’s power to terminate employees: On February 28, a federal district judge in California issued a temporary restraining order, holding that “OPM’s January 20 memo [directing agency heads to make a list of probationary employees and to identify which should be retained], February 14 email [ordering agencies to terminate probationary employees], and all other efforts by OPM to direct the termination of employees at NPS, BLM, VA, DOD, SBA, and FWS are unlawful, invalid, and must be stopped and rescinded.” The order technically only holds OPM’s actions unlawful, and following the decision, OPM backtracked on its directive concerning probationary employees. The National Science Foundation and USDA have subsequently begun reinstating fired probationary employees. Temporary restraining orders are indeed temporary, and the judge has set an evidentiary hearing for March 13.

• Reinstated fired merit systems protection board member: On March 4, a federal district judge in D.C. held that the president’s firing of MSPB member Cathy Harris without the statutorily-required cause violated federal law. The district judge had already issued a temporary restraining order that had effectively reinstated Harris, and the new order made the reinstatement more permanent. The judge prohibited administration officials from firing Harris unless the firing is “for cause,” as is required under law. The Department of Justice will appeal. The MSPB typically has three board members; it must have two Senate-confirmed members present to have a quorum that allows it to operate normally. One member announced his retirement on February 28. If Harris’s termination is allowed to proceed, the MSPB will lack a quorum, although there are some actions it can take in an “inquorate” state. Because the MSPB is the body that hears federal employees’ claims that their employment rights have not been respected, its full operation is critical to federal employees being able to challenge many adverse employment actions.

• Temporarily reinstated nearly 6,000 probationary employees at USDA : On March 5, the MSPB paused the firing of nearly 6,000 USDA employees, ordering them reinstated for 45 days while OSC investigates whether the terminations were lawful.

Blast radius and pushback

In our last Dear Civil Servant, we detailed how federal firings and funding freezes harm you, your family, and your state, identifying this as the “blast radius” of the federal government’s implosion. In the past week, the administration’s actions have continued to imperil people in the U.S. and abroad, including teachers, small businesses, potential organ transplant recipients, scientists, veterans, farmers, the elderly, and countless others.

You can track the devastating effect of the PEPFAR funding freeze here. You can find a tabulation of the number of lost jobs — and what to do about it — here.

In the face of these collective losses, it is hard not to lose hope. But we are inspired by the daily actions that people are taking in support of our Constitution and the rule of law.

Constituents are objecting to the unlawful and harmful firings and funding cuts at town halls and public meetings across California, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas (the video is really worth watching!), Maryland, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Wisconsin, among other places. Constituent voices have been so impactful that the National Republican Congressional Committee has instructed members to cancel in-person town halls.

Even the Republican and independent leadership in the Alaska state legislature are emphatically urging the state’s U.S. senators to stand up for their constituents. And don’t forget about the local news stations heroically reporting these stories of resilience, protest, and outrage. One of the biggest types of “wins” is when the administration itself changes how it acts without a court order or politician forcing it to do so, and that is also happening — reckless and arbitrary layoffs have resulted in the administration backpedalling on its decisions and having to rehire critical workers.

Every one of you who shares your story, attends a town hall, calls your representative, or engages in peaceful protest is standing up to the assault on our Constitution. Citizens across our nation stand in solidarity with you and recognize the value of your work.

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What we’re reading:

• Hamilton Nolan, They are a minority: Get your mind right.

• Lux Alptraum, What Abuse Survivors Can Teach Us About Trump 2.0 (December 2024)

• Dan Sinker, What Felt Impossible Became Possible

• Benjamin Wittes, The Situation: I’m Done Cooperating

This publication should not be construed as legal advice on any specific facts or circumstances. The contents are intended for general information and educational purposes only, and should not be relied on as if it were advice about a particular fact situation. The distribution of this publication is not intended to create, and receipt of it does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship with Protect Democracy. This publication also contains hypertext links to information created and maintained by other entities. Protect Democracy does not control or guarantee the accuracy or completeness of this outside information, nor is the inclusion of a link to be intended as an endorsement of those outside sites.

Dear civil servant,

As the new Administration has hacked away at the federal workforce over the past few weeks, it has been hard to watch the reaction of those who cheered as you lost your jobs and as whole agencies were effectively shut down.

But the work of the civil service — your work — is critical to the functioning of American society. And there are growing signs that the American people are starting to realize this. The destruction of the federal workforce is having real world impacts in all of our backyards.

In this note, we have a few resources to share with civil servants, but we largely focus on acknowledging and memorializing the ways in which the administration’s cuts to your work are hurting real people, right now, across America.

New resources

• FAQ on the rights of federal employees with disabilities: A new explainer from the Bazelon center.

• A primer on reductions in force: A new explainer from Lawfare.

• Podcasts on federal employees’ rights: Just Security’s podcast episode What Just Happened: Understanding Federal Employee Rights and of course The Daily’s feature on civil servants.

• A secure, anonymous portal for sharing information about the impacts of changes in the federal government: A Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit has created a platform where government workers and others can share how federal contract terminations, staff cuts and data issues impact their work without using personal information.

Untended nukes, diminished air-traffic controller ranks, shuttered national parks, and other hazards of the purges

The services and support that our government provides — and that you spent decades helping administer — are critical to people across the country and the world.

Where to begin?

Safety. Weeks after the fatal plane crash in D.C., the administration has begun firing several hundred FAA employees, including “personnel hired for FAA radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance.” Farmers are facing financial crisis due to funding cuts. After the Department of Energy accidentally fired nuclear safety workers and then tried to recall them, some workers who were fired have not returned. Trump’s hiring freeze has halted onboarding of federal firefighters ahead of wildfire season, and the layoffs of National Parks and Forests workers means less personnel for fire-safety education efforts, search and rescue missions, and wilderness patrol.

Health. Some health clinics and nonprofits serving rural and low-income patients are unable to access previously allocated federal funds, disrupting patient care. Dozens of clinical trials have been abruptly frozen, leaving people across the country and world with experimental drugs and medical products in their bodies. Vietnam’s victims of Agent Orange have been left without support and climate disaster aid groups are on the brink of shutdown. One USAID worker told Wired that after DOGE blocked assistance aimed at preventing HIV, “at a minimum, 300 babies that wouldn’t have had HIV, now do.” During the worst flu season in decades, the communications embargo at the CDC is making the disease harder to track. Meanwhile, half of the CDC’s Disease Detectors have been fired, disemboweling the country’s epidemic intelligence surveillance.

The impacts of this month alone will be with us for generations. NIH cut billions of dollars in biomedical funding, imperiling vital research in everything from cancer to heart disease. Years from now, we will be left wondering if the funds that were frozen could have kept our loved ones alive. (Strikingly, those dismantling the federal government reportedly have seen their own family members’ lives directly saved by NIH research.)

Infrastructure. Staffing and funding cuts at HUD seem poised to delay home and road rebuilding efforts in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene. Other forms of economic security are also on the line; housing markets across the country that include a large number of federal workers are reeling from “return-to-office” mandates and terminations.

Kids, veterans, and other vulnerable communities. Vulnerable communities and their support service providers have been particularly burdened by these personnel and funding cuts. Around the country, 57 Head Start programs across 25 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico lost access to funds. Native American tribes across the country have lost critical staff and funds, endangering access to education and solar power projects. The administration’s partial dismantling of the Department of Education impacts a disproportionate numberof low-income students; its weaponization of the Department's funding is being used to threaten historically Black sororities and fraternities and curricula. At the Department of Veterans Affairs, workers who provide critical support to former service members are suffering from the confusion and chaos. Nonprofits that serve at-risk individuals and communities are struggling to operate.

Yes, in your back yard

This administration has detonated an implosion of our government, and no one is beyond the blast radius. Just look at this sampling of heart-wrenching news out of all 50 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico:

• Alabama: NIH cut would cost University of Alabama - Birmingham $70 million, threaten jobs and “life-saving research” in Alabama.

• Alaska: “An outsized impact”: Federal layoffs begin in Alaska on Trump orders.

• Arizona: Arizona universities face massive cuts to medical research if Trump’s plan is implemented.

• Arkansas: Kids at the elementary school at Fort Campbell, home of the 101st airborne that helped desegregate Little Rock schools, can’t read about their parents’ heroic predecessors, because the civil rights movement appears to count as “DEI.”

• California: Trump’s funding cuts leave the nation vulnerable to catastrophic wildfire.

• Colorado: More than 150 Forest Service workers managing public land in Colorado lose jobs as part of Trump cuts.

• Connecticut: 21 school districts lost vital federal funding.

• Delaware: Federal funding freeze created chaos for Delaware nonprofits.

• Florida: Federal research scientists worry firings will jeopardize data collection on coastal erosion and water levels — which help counties and cities to understand flood risks.

• Georgia: A Trump siege at the C.D.C. and an attack on Atlanta’s “Global Health Capital.”

• Hawai’i: Federal layoffs have real-world consequences in the islands.

• Idaho: “Scared, upset and angry”: Forest Service cuts hit Idaho's Payette National Forest following Trump Administration order.

• Illinois: President Donald Trump’s moves to end foreign aid agency hit close to home in Illinois.

• Indiana: Trump’s funding freeze could hinder projects to provide solar energy to hundreds of households in two low-and moderate-income Columbus neighborhoods.

• Iowa: “I'm not sure what's next”: National Park ranger in Iowa among thousands fired Friday.

• Kansas: Billions of dollars at stake for farmers hit by Trump funding freeze, pause on foreign aid.

• Kentucky: Impending cuts to Forest Service workforce may gut staff at Red River Gorge, Cave Run in Kentucky.

• Louisiana: “There was nothing left to cut”: Layoffs spark concern for SWLA wildlife refuges.

• Maine: Layoffs could hurt work at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard PSNY, whose 8,000 civilian employees build our nuclear submarine defense systems. In a letter to OPM, Maine Senator Collins sought PSNY’s exemption from the buyout program.

• Maryland: “Confusion rules the day”: Trump orders force layoffs at refugee org.

• Massachusetts: Boston University (BU) leadership strongly opposes NIH move to cut funding for “research that helps improve human health and save lives” — risking BU’s advances in early detection of skin cancer, a bionic pancreas used by more than 15,000 Americans with Type I diabetes, etc.

• Michigan: Federal research cuts would rock Michigan economy, halt clinical trials, those affected say.

• Minnesota: DEI rollback threatens Black/Native health program.

• Mississippi: For federally dependent Mississippi, Trump’s grant freeze could halt $11 billion.

• Missouri: Kansas City IRS workers brace for mass layoff. Union fears 1,000 workers will be cut.

• Montana: Bozeman nonprofits brace for potential federal funding cuts.

• Nebraska: Federal layoffs surprise Nebraska cattle research center, sparking concern from cattlemen.

• Nevada: “Lives are at risk”: Federal funding cuts threaten Nevada drug overdose research.

• New Hampshire: Federal workers from New Hampshire face job losses amid mass government layoffs.

• New Jersey: DOGE imposes cuts to 9/11 Survivors’ Fund, reducing staff by 20% and cancelling grants, drawing bipartisan pushback.

• New Mexico: Uncertainty looms over University of New Mexico with proposed federal research funding cuts. Reports say the University could lose over $20 million in medical research.

• New York: Local domestic abuse treatment center in Utica, New York says federal funding cut will hurt women.

• North Carolina: Veteran says her mammogram was cancelled due to VA staffing shortages.

• North Dakota: With federal funds again on the chopping block, the University of North Dakota’s research community holds its breath.

• Ohio: Here’s how much Ohio schools stand to lose under a dismantled Department of Education.

• Oklahoma: “We’re your neighbors, friends and family”: Oklahoma City Federal Aviation Administration workers axed in federal firings feel betrayed, concerned by rhetoric.

• Oregon: Mass layoffs at Bonneville Power Administration raise concerns about reliability of power grid. Oregon Senators have also raised alarm bells about Oregon’s electric grid, due to these federal cuts.

• Pennsylvania: Independence park and local FAA office caught in federal firing spree.

• Puerto Rico: Funding cuts could jeopardize a local nonprofit’s programs, including one that provides food and shelter to individuals and families in need, and another that donates solar panels to those who can’t afford electricity.

• Rhode Island: Federal workers terminated from Rhode Island USDA Office warn of impacts on residents, including loss of funding to local farmers.

• South Carolina: State research universities could lose tens of millions under Trump's federal funds cut.

• South Dakota: “It’s demoralizing”: Trump’s climate funding freeze has left tribes and community groups in limbo.

• Tennessee: Foreign aid freeze halts University of Tennessee international agriculture program.

• Texas: Elon Musk’s federal downsizing plans could close as many as 450 Texas facilities, including multiple sites that house offices for the Social Security Administration, Farm Service Agency, and Small Business Administration.

• Utah: “It's devastating”: Utah federal employee scrambles for work after mass layoff.

• Vermont: Vermont Aid Workers Reel in Wake of Rapid USAID Cuts.

• Virginia: Job centers in northern Virginia prepare to help more federal workers as layoffs persist while the Fairfax County chairperson warns of the impact to the local economy if layoffs continue.

• Washington: Trump layoffs hit Pacific Northwest engineers and researchers at PNNL, Hanford cleanup, elsewhere.

• Washington, D.C.: Shockwaves for DC regional economy: Trump layoffs spur surge in jobless claims

• West Virginia: Cuts to services that support people with disabilities.

• Wisconsin: Waukesha Head Start program shuts down over funding fears, system lockout.

• Wyoming: Valentine’s Day massacre: Uncounted throng of Wyomingites fired by Trump administration.

Your work matters. You matter. We are sorry that it has taken some so long to recognize that, but we hope people around the country are beginning to better appreciate what your service means.

What we’re reading

• Congressional Research Service: Congress’s Power Over Appropriations: Constitutional and Statutory Provisions (June 16, 2020)

• Sherrilyn Ifill’s The Other Constitutional Crisis

• New York Times: Trump Team Finds Loophole to Effectively Maintain Spending Freezes

• Can We Still Govern?: The Weaponization of Trauma: The human toll being paid by public employees (Guest post by Rachael Dietkus)

It was a hack job.

Last week, the Trump Administration fired nearly 10,000 federal workers across a number of agencies, focusing predominantly on probationary employees.

This was not the work of experts skillfully using a scalpel to trim the fat while ensuring that essential services could continue uninterrupted. This was not a firing that targeted poor performers. To the contrary, it was an amateurish mess.

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Multiple agencies actually had to try to “un-fire” some employees when they belatedly realized they needed them. In fact, many of the termination letters citing poor performance as justification for firing went to employees who had received high performance ratings, with supervisors confirming that the justifications the agencies provided were false.

These cuts hit individuals who did not deserve to be fired. One fired USDA employee called it “a butchering of some of our best.”

The firings also make all of us less safe.

Weeks after the fatal plane crash at National Airport, the Administration began firing several hundred FAA employees, including “personnel hired for FAA radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance.”

The Department of Energy fired nuclear safety workers, but by the time they realized this was perhaps an existential threat to the future of humanity, they couldn’t figure out how to contact the former employees to bring them back.

Healthcare for veterans is poised to suffer after the VA cut around a thousand employees from a health system that already struggled with chronic staffing shortages.

These examples are just the beginning. The firings will harm countless people around the country and world. But right now, the purge is uniquely affecting the terminated employees and those who fear they are next.

This letter provides a brief overview of what a probationary employee is and what rights they have, highlights some anticipated challenges to the probationary purge, and provides some resources for terminated former employees.

Rights of probationary employees (including a new explainer)

Generally speaking, new government hires complete probationary periods to assess their performance before they accrue substantial civil service protections.

During this one- or two-year period, civil servants are referred to as “probationary employees.” Though some are new to federal service, many of these employees are experts in their field and are highly experienced professionals — like the nurse with over five years of federal service who had to switch agencies because the military ordered her spouse to move, and so began a new probationary period.

Both entry-level and senior-level jobs require a probationary period. At least one agency has claimed that the probationary firings applied primarily to clerical and administrative roles, which is simply not the case. Probationary employees exist at all levels of the federal government.

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Two key points are worth emphasizing:

First, the exploitation of the relatively fewer protections for probationary employees subverts the actual purpose of this part of the system: ensuring a competent federal workforce.

The probation period exists for a reason, and it is not to give the president permission to hack away at the civil service without respecting the law. In our merits-based federal employment system, the point of the probation period is to allow supervisors to assess how well the employee is able to perform their role, so that only competent employees go on to receive “tenure” protections.

As the legislative history of the Civil Service Reform Act explains, “[t]he probationary or trial period . . . is an extension of the examining process to determine an employee’s ability to actually perform the duties of the position.” S. Rep. 96-969, at 45 (1978).

Second, probationary employees do have rights.

While it’s true that these employees often have fewer job protections than non-probationary employees, they have rights, including (but often not limited to) protection from prohibited personnel practices and constitutional violations.

As a federal court of appeals has emphasized, probationary employees are “just as entitled to be free of illegal or discriminatory treatment from their employers as are non-probationary employees.”

• Our new explainer on the rights of probationary employees walks through the different rights that different categories of probationary employees have, as well as how a probationary employee can figure out their status.

• This article explains more about how to read your SF-50. And though we’ve highlighted them before, this explainer from Suzanne Summerlin at Just Security and this blog post from the James & Hoffman law firm are both worth a re-read in light of recent developments.

Challenges to the firings

If you are a former probationary employee and are interested in challenging the legality of your termination, we are aware of a few ongoing efforts that you might consider learning more about:

• Democracy Forward has filed a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel to challenge the mass terminations of probationary employees. The complaint asks OSC to treat the complaint as a class covering all similarly situated individuals. At this time, Democracy Forward is compiling information about similarly situated employees to share with the Office of Special Counsel. You can learn more about this effort here.

• The federal employment law firm James & Hoffman is also considering legal action. You can find more information about that effort and how to participate here and here.

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Additional resources for employees

• Democracy Forward’s new tutorial on how to file an appeal of covered personnel actions with the MSPB. An appeal with the MSPB needs to be filed within 30 days of being fired or demoted. (Our explainer on the rights of probationary employees identifies which probationary employees have MSPB appeal rights; many non-probationary employees also have MSPB appeal rights).

• Civic Match: Connecting Federal Workers to State and Local Jobs (Civic Match Jobs Board; Civic Match Application; Guidance for Federal Jobseekers)

• Two sets of resources (1, 2) for federal workers and former federal workers in Maryland from the County Executive of Montgomery County and from the state.

• The American Foreign Service Association has put together this “virtual go bag,” a list of what employees can do to prepare for a sudden departure.

• The Partnership for Public Service’s webinar series on topics such as “how might my benefits be affected,” and “what are my whistleblower rights?” It also has written webinar recaps.

Relevant reading:

• First Fall, by Maggie Smith.

• There’s a Term for What Trump and Musk are Doing: How Regime Change Happens in America, by Anne Applebaum.

• An Atlantic essay co-authored by one of us on why the Administration’s purges seem an awful lot like an unconstitutional effort to resurrect a government-wide political patronage system, something the First Amendment forbids.

• An analysis by Chris Geidner at LawDork of the February 11 “workforce optimization” executive order.

• The Use and Abuse of Administrative Leave, by Nick Bednar on Lawfare.

This publication should not be construed as legal advice on any specific facts or circumstances. The contents are intended for general information and educational purposes only, and should not be relied on as if it were advice about a particular fact situation. The distribution of this publication is not intended to create, and receipt of it does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship with Protect Democracy. This publication also contains hypertext links to information created and maintained by other entities. Protect Democracy does not control or guarantee the accuracy or completeness of this outside information, nor is the inclusion of a link to be intended as an endorsement of those outside sites.

Dear civil servant,

Every day there is fresh bad news out of Washington. DOGE’s dismantling of our government — its disregard for laws, civility and basic decency — is staggering. We’ve particularly been grieving the harm caused to you and to the people you have served both here in America and around the world. As DOGE’s dismemberment of federal agencies continues, we wonder what will be the next critical government service to fall. There is good reason to be very, deeply concerned about the fate of our country. But for the first time in what feels like a long time, we also started to feel a tiny glimmer of something different: hope.

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First, let's consider that the courts are affirming what we have all known to be true: This administration’s actions to destroy the civil service and the institutions that Congress created and that you serve are illegal, plain and simple. And it is clear the administration has taken notice.

In this letter, we’ll provide some updates on federal employment matters; cover recent wins and newly-filed lawsuits that fight back against these illegal acts; and look to the damage this administration has already caused and the fight to come.

Federal employment resources

We get frequent questions (understandably!) from civil servants looking to better understand their rights and benefits, now that both are under siege. Below are a number of resources that federal employees can consult to get a better picture of their own situation.

On retirement benefits: Some employees have considered voluntarily resigning out of the fear that being fired would jeopardize retirement benefits — but this is not the case for the vast majority of feds!

On the “Fork” Offer: Federal labor unions sued to block the “Fork in the Road” offer that we wrote about last week, questioning whether it would be honored and arguing it violated the law. A judge agreed to stop — for now — the deferred resignation program from being implemented.

On eligibility for unemployment: When the “Fork” offer was still on the table, Washington Post reporters answered questions from readers, including whether people who accepted the offer would be eligible for unemployment benefits where they lived. (Answer: for many people, it’s unlikely.)

On the rights of probationary employees: Yes, probationary employees have fewer employment protections than non-probationary employees — but that doesn’t mean there are none. Check out Just Security’s FAQ page for more.

Additional resources:

• The Federal Workers Rights blog maintained by the law firm James & Hoffman.

• Protect Democracy’s updated webpage with resources for civil servants.

• Webinars on federal employee rights from the Partnership for Public Service.

• Stay up-to-date on the administration’s many, many early moves with this New York Times tracker.

• Senator Tim Kaine’s resources page for federal workers includes a kind statement that is worth a read. Representative Jamie Raskin’s resource page is here, as is a recording from his town hall focused on federal workers.

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Fighting back and early wins

This administration and its allies were open about their “shock and awe” strategy to overwhelm people to a point where fighting back to defend the rule of law would begin to feel futile. Is what is happening to our democracy overwhelming? Absolutely. But is fighting back futile? Has the battle already been lost? Absolutely not.

Federal employees, unions, nonprofits, and other organizations are filing lawsuits — some seeking to immediately stop the administration’s lawlessness — and often, they are winning.

These efforts to defend our democracy are critical on their own terms, but they are also essential to giving us all the hope that motivates us to continue the fight.

When Trump tried to put thousands of USAID workers on leave, the American Foreign Service Association and American Federation of Government Employees sued to stop it. Last Friday, February 7, a federal judge (himself appointed by Trump) hit pause, citing the real harm that the move could cause workers abroad.

FBI agents who worked on cases related to the January 6 attack on the Capitol and the criminal investigations of Trump filed lawsuits to block the Justice Department from publicly releasing a list of agents who worked on the cases. Last week, the Justice Department agreed to keep the list confidential.

A group of state attorneys general sued to stop a new policy at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that would have caused major funding cuts to critical healthcare and research — at hospitals and research facilities. Within hours of filing suit, a judge had halted the new policy until a hearing on its lawfulness could be held.

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On February 4, the nonprofit advocacy group Doctors for America filed a lawsuit against OPM and various public health-related agencies who had removed key webpages and data in response to Trump’s recent executive order on gender. These webpages included, among other topics, information related to HIV, reproductive care, and health risks to young people. On February 11, a federal judge granted the nonprofit’s request for a temporary restraining order, directing the administration to restore access to this public information.

Hampton Dellinger, who leads the Office of Special Counsel (which, among other things, protects federal whistleblowers who report alleged corruption and lawlessness and waste within government) was fired on Friday night. Within hours of filing suit to challenge his firing, a judge reinstated him, pending a hearing on the lawfulness of his termination. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) member Gwynne Wilcox similarly challenged her removal.

Even that strange new “HR@opm.gov” address that has been emailing you has been challenged in court — there, based on the potential privacy issues surrounding an unknown system handling communications that may contain private information. Though the judge denied the request for a temporary restraining order, the lawsuit continues.

Multiple lawsuits were filed last week to stop DOGE’s access to highly sensitive data at the Treasury Department (1, 2) and the Department of Labor, and judges in those cases all agreed to pause or restrict in some way DOGE’s ability to access or use that data (1, 2, 3). And new cases are being filed at a rapid pace. Our colleagues at Protect Democracy filed suit on February 10 to stop DOGE representatives’ access to highly sensitive databases at three agencies: the Treasury Department, Office of Personnel Management, and the Department of Education. As lead counsel Kristy Parker put it: “We’re watching in real time as unvetted Trump cronies break the law to get access to Americans’ most sensitive and personal data. Their goal is to snoop on vast amounts of Americans’ data and try to use what they find to enrich themselves, reward their allies, and punish their critics.” Days ago, the National Treasury Employees (NTEU) sued to stop the dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

And while the administration has tried to move quickly to chip away at the civil service with freezes, firings, and “fork” offers, we have also kept our eye on a key component of their long-game — stripping employment protections from large swaths of the civil service by creating a new category of employee: Schedule P/C (the newer model of Schedule F). Here at Protect Democracy, we filed a lawsuit last week on behalf of the Government Accountability Project and NARFE challenging this scheme to transform the civil service into an army of loyalists. If Schedule P/C is allowed to take effect, the results will be far-reaching; many likely to be affected have also sued (1, 2, 3) to stop the administration from ignoring the law.

These lawsuits are a handful of the challenges to the administration’s acts; Just Security has a comprehensive tracker for anyone interested in a deeper dive. Of course, the fight is not just in court — nor can it be. People inside the federal government are fighting back and speaking out. The USAID Inspector General just released a scathing report detailing the effects of the administration’s attacks, pulling no punches with sections like “Recent Directives Have Curtailed USAID's Ability to Vet Humanitarian Assistance Awards for Potential Terrorist Ties and Monitor Aid Deliveries in High-Risk Environments.”

Every day, civil servants are mobilizing, protesting, and unionizing at rapid speed in an attempt to hold the line against the dismantling of the government.

Relevant reading:

• Democracy is Crumbling. Is Anybody Doing Anything? Yes. And You Can Too, by Sherrilyn Ifill

• The Chilling Consequences of Going Along With Trump, by M. Gessen

This publication should not be construed as legal advice on any specific facts or circumstances. The contents are intended for general information and educational purposes only, and should not be relied on as if it were advice about a particular fact situation. The distribution of this publication is not intended to create, and receipt of it does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship with Protect Democracy. This publication also contains hypertext links to information created and maintained by other entities. Protect Democracy does not control or guarantee the accuracy or completeness of this outside information, nor is the inclusion of a link to be intended as an endorsement of those outside sites.

Dear civil servant,

This week it got worse.

You were already being asked to perform your critical work amid the chaos of the firings, transfers, telework and remote work changes, RIFs, spending freezes, requests for lists of probationary employees, and other efforts to demean you and interfere with your work. Now you’re doing that and being asked to consider the “Fork in the Road” email: an offer of questionable legality — accompanied by thinly-veiled threats about what things will be like if you don’t leave — under a coercively-short timeline. As you work through this, you’re also holding the fact that after a career of helping the U.S. government play by the rules — and doing so yourself, scrupulously abiding by ethics rules and document security regulations — you no longer have faith in its promises.

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You don’t deserve this. What you do deserve is to make important decisions with accurate information, free from coercion, under a reasonable timeline. Our goal today is to offer some trustworthy information, ways of thinking about this big decision, and resources to learn more as you consider your options. To be clear, we’re not offering legal advice here or telling you what to do, just offering analysis and information that you can use.

What’s the “Fork”?

On January 28, 2025, most federal employees received an email titled “Fork in the Road” that purported to offer a sort of “deferred resignation” whereby employees could continue to be paid for about six months if they agreed to stop working. This is what some call an “exploding offer”: If not accepted by February 6, the offer would no longer be on the table, and the email suggested those who stayed may be risking being laid off or having their employment protections stripped from them. The details of the offer were murky and have kept changing, and questions were immediately raised about its legality. Could this thing hold up?

Since the initial email, OPM has put up an additional FAQ page with some limited amount of additional information — some of questionable veracity. This Sunday evening, OPM sent out additional “FAQs” to federal employees that try to respond to some of the criticisms of the offer. Then on Monday —three days before the looming deadline — OPM sent out the contract they now want employees to sign with their agency to formally accept the Fork offer.

The contract dropped at least four significant surprises:

• Federal employees who accept the “offer” actually do have to work through the end of the month (paragraph 2);

• Agency heads can unilaterally rescind (as in, cancel) the agreement, without any process or appeal — raising the question of whether the government is really agreeing to anything at all (paragraph 9);

• Employees who sign have to agree to a strikingly broad and arguably unlawful liability waiver. Folks tend not to care much about liability waivers because most people assume they’ll never sue, but here’s why it matters: If the government knows you can’t hold them accountable by suing in response to mistreatment or abuse, that removes a big incentive to treat people fairly. And it can put accepting employees in an even more vulnerable position vis-a-vis the government (paragraph 12); and

• That waiver section is so broad that it raises real questions about whether the government will argue that employees can’t even ask a court or tribunal to enforce this contract if the government ignores it (paragraph 12).

To put it mildly: questions remain.

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Fact or fiction?

When making an important decision, most people consider all the facts. But what happens when an offer like the “Fork” email asserts information that seems unreliable? People cannot make good decisions without good information. Below, we highlight some of the misinformation in the Fork email and try to set the record straight. We want to acknowledge, however, that we are in truly unprecedented territory here. As we do our best to provide clarity, there are many questions for which we simply do not have answers.

Is this thing legal? Is it enforceable?

For the fork offer to be legal and enforceable, a few things need to be true: The program needs to be authorized by law; it needs to be funded; it needs to not violate any other laws; and there needs to be a means for holding the government accountable if it tries to renege on the agreement.

• Is the Fork authorized by law? Not to our knowledge. While federal law does authorize agencies to offer voluntary separation incentives payments (known as VSIPS), the Fork offer doesn’t appear to comply with, or invoke, that law. Insofar as the administration is purporting to put all signatories on extended administrative leave until September 30, there are open questions about whether a court would find that the offer is authorized by the Administrative Leave Act, which appears to limit administrative leave to 10 work days per calendar year. Federal unions and Senators have also warned that they are not aware of any law authorizing OPM to make this offer. You can compare the Fork in the Road email to actual government buyout letters here.

• Is the program funded? Not necessarily. The government is currently funded through a continuing resolution that expires in March. Yes, it may be true that employees who accept the Fork offer may be furloughed, and in that sense they may be entitled to the same backpay as employees who did not accept the Fork offer. But what OPM has not addressed is the more basic funding risk: Congress is in charge of spending — not agencies. And Congress could just decide not to fund salaries for employees who have accepted deferred resignation.

• Does the program violate any other laws? Quite possibly. Multiple commentators have raised questions about whether the Fork violates the Anti-Deficiency Act, which states that "no officer or employee of the government may create or authorize an obligation in excess of the funds available, or in advance of appropriations unless otherwise authorized by law." As discussed above, the Fork offers to fund federal employees months beyond when the actual government is funded. And one former cabinet secretary raised questions about OPM’s promise to fund salaries of other agencies’ employees, stating that no agency “is authorized by Congress to move money from one agency or department to another without Congress’s approval.” As discussed above, the broad waiver provision may violate federal law.

• Can the government be held accountable if it tries to renege on the agreement? The waiver provision seems to say “no.” As we discuss above and below, the waiver provision seems to say that no employee can hold the government accountable if it tries to renege on the agreement or if it tries to subject employees on federal leave to other consequences for having accepted the agreement. Even before the new contract was announced, Civil Service Strong observed, “Elon Musk offered buyouts to Twitter employees in November 2022, and then broke that promise shortly thereafter. Given the lack of authority in federal laws and regulations for this unprecedented offer, it is hard to know whether the offer can or will be fulfilled.”

What would federal employees be giving up? And why does that matter?

We were really struck by paragraph 12 in the contract that agencies sent out on February 3. It’s worth pausing and reading that language. Here it is; we bolded some sections for emphasis:

Employee forever waives, and will not pursue through any judicial, administrative, or other process, any action against [AGENCY] that is based on, arising from, or related to Employee’s employment at [AGENCY] or the deferred resignation offer, including any and all claims that were or could have been brought concerning said matters. Employee unconditionally releases [AGENCY] and its present and former employees, officers, agents, representatives, and all persons acting by, through, or in concert with any of those individuals, either in their official or individual capacities, from any and all liability based on, arising from, or relating to the matters that Employee may have against them, including any and all claims that were or could have been brought. Consistent with applicable law, Employee similarly waives any claim that could be brought on Employee’s behalf by another entity, including Employee’s labor union.

Wow. This language purports to waive all of an employee’s legal rights vis-a-vis anyone who was ever associated with their agency. Not only that — it also purports to waive a union’s rights, or another organization’s rights (like a nonprofit employee membership organization) to sue. Not incidentally, on January 29, AFGE had warned there may be a "basis for a grievance or unfair labor practice charge [arising out of the Fork communications] alleging, among other things, a bypass of the Union with respect to communications about the Program directly to employees."

If no one can sue the government for its misconduct towards civil servants, how can the government be held accountable? How can things get better?

Finally, there are some federal laws — those that are meant to protect workers, including from unfair treatment — that have provisions saying that potential claims can’t be waived. Future analysis may suggest that this Fork offer conflicts with those laws. But it can be costly and stressful to figure that out in court.

(Trying to) understand the terms of the Fork offer

As others have pointed out, the terms of this offer are unclear, and OPM’s various statements on the matter have sometimes conflicted.

For example, OPM’s FAQs pose the question, “Am I expected to work at my government job during the deferred resignation period?” and answers it with a simple “No.” But the Fork email itself says employees must “assist” their “employing agency with completing reasonable and customary tasks and processes to facilitate [their] departure,” and these terms are wholly undefined. And now, the Proposed Contract has the exact opposite answer: Yes! For the rest of February.

As another example: OPM’s FAQ reads, “We encourage you to find a job in the private sector as soon as you would like to do so.” But OPM’s guidance memo has more hedges: “Employing agencies should assess what restrictions, if any, exist for employees who have resigned but remain employed (including on administrative leave) by their employing agency.” That’s because, as NPR notes, “Many agencies have ethics rules that require prior approval. Those rules still apply to employees who are furloughed, according to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.” The Proposed Contract, in Paragraph 8, puts a number of restrictions on the original “go ahead and take other work” promise, rightfully pointing out that there are a number of ethical restrictions that could limit federal employees’ actual ability to do this.

There’s also the question of whether an employee can be fired after accepting the Fork offer. The February 3 contract says that “[AGENCY] shall not take steps to terminate Employee’s employment with the federal service prior to September 30, 2025, except where Employee is convicted of a felony crime that would render Employee ineligible for Federal employment.” But OPM, the president, or another agency (for example, if a small agency gets folded into a bigger one) might still try to claim the right to terminate the signatory’s federal service.

And then there’s the question of whether employees who thought they accepted the original offer, which was offered by OPM, are operating under its terms or under the new one, which comes from their agency.

Inconsistencies like this — no less the waiver provision and the administration’s clearly-expressed disregard for other laws protecting public servants and for public service generally (see FAQ #2) — make it hard to feel confident that promises made will be promises kept. As the Washington Post’s personal finance columnist put it: “This reads like a scam.”

With information dripping out every few days, who knows when the next email will land, modifying the offer that is on the table. What we do know is that contracts like this ordinarily take time to carefully review, and your employer has greatly restricted your ability to make a considered decision about whether to agree.

Setting the record straight: Correcting coercive misinformation in the Fork email

If you felt pressured to resign while reading the Fork email, you weren’t alone. In addition to an oddly short timeline for making a decision — an age-old tactic of high-pressure sales environments, used car dealerships, and unsavory characters who operate outside the law — there were veiled threats of layoffs, loyalty tests, and more. But what’s worse is that many of those threats were based on bad facts or ignored legal realities. And some were just… untrue. Below, we correct some of the misinformation.

• Employment protections: The Fork offer included a threat of termination or that jobs would be eliminated, while also trying to assure employees they would be “treated with dignity” and their rights respected. The targeted firings of many career employees call that into question, as do the firings of those who stand up to the administration’s unlawful directives. The administration has asserted Trump “has the power to fire anyone within the executive branch that he wishes to.”

  • What’s the truth? You. Have. Rights. The administration cannot create a civil service of at-will loyalists simply by stating it is so. Since the very early days of this country and continuing into more modern times, Congress has granted civil servants protections from politically-motivated firings and other adverse actions. This administration’s blatant disregard for the actual law can and will be challenged.

• Stripping of career civil servants employment protections: The “Fork” email warned that big changes were afoot, including “reclassification to at-will status for a substantial number of federal employees.” Can they really just do that?

  • What’s the truth? The Trump Administration is not three weeks old, but it is already facing three lawsuits (1, 2, 3) that challenge Trump’s plan to strip the protections meant to ensure a nonpartisan and merits-based civil service away from federal employees. The “Fork” offer speaks as if the Trump Administration can do whatever it wants to federal employees without any checks. Many organizations are asking courts to stop these illegal acts, and more will follow.

• Telework: The “Fork” offer is framed largely around a telework lie: that a “substantial majority of federal employees . . . have been working remotely.”

  • What’s the truth? About 50% of federal employees aren’t even telework-eligible because of the nature of their duties, and the federal employees who may telework perform the majority of their work in-person. What’s more, studies show that on those occasions when federal employees do telework, they are more productive and better serve the American people.

• Productivity of federal employees: The FAQ section on OPM’s web page about this offer includes an unnecessary dig at federal civil servants: “The way to greater American prosperity is encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector.”

  • What’s the truth? OK, this might not be coercive misinformation in the same category as the other misstatements, but we can’t just let it stand unchallenged. Civil servants do amazing, world-changing, life-saving work (Even more examples here, here, and here). And you certainly aren’t rewarded with big bonuses or stock options. You create American prosperity and deserve gratitude. Thank you.

Where can I read more? You can find analyses of these questions at Lawfare, Just Security, Government Executive, the Washington Post, Civil Service Strong, NPR, and AFGE.

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Resources for learning more about your rights

• The Partnership for Public Service has a “federal employee explainer” webinar series. Upcoming topics include, “What if my employment status changes?” “What are my rights as an employee?” “What are my whistleblower rights?” and “How might my benefits be affected.” You can learn more and RSVP here.

• Justice Connection is a new organization that was founded to support DOJ employees as they navigate this difficult period. You can read more about the organization here.

• An essay at Just Security on Federal Employee Rights: What Probationary Employees Need to Know.

• ACLU’s guide on federal employees’ First Amendment rights.

• The Government Accountability Project’s discussion of the rights of employees to refuse to take illegal orders. There are an increasing number of public examples of civil servants upholding their oaths of office and saying “no” to unlawful requests. Other employees are surely doing the same thing behind closed doors.

• Our previous letters (#1 and #2) in this series.

Relevant reading

• Jim Fallows’ essay on “a real-time sample of how it sounds when unheralded public employees, whose names the general public will never know, do their work with unflappable competence, knowing that others’ lives are at stake.”

• Pew Research Center’s “What the data says about federal workers” provides important insight into the composition of the federal workforce:

  • “Fewer than a fifth” of federal employees work in the Washington DC metropolitan area (est. 449,500).

  • The Department of Veterans Affairs employs the largest number of federal employees (est. 486,000 people).

  • 16% of the federal workforce (the single largest occupancy) are in “health-related fields” (nursing, hospital administration, etc.).

• Survey: Most feds say OPM’s resignation offer too uncertain to accept

• Still Here, by Langston Hughes

Whether to stay or leave federal service is a hard decision. Against the backdrop of the unprecedented lawlessness and callousness of those in charge, all the more so. For those who leave: thank you for your service. And for those who stay and continue to hold tight to their oaths: thank you for continuing to offer us hope. We see you standing up for what is right. We know that you are one of the last bulwarks against even more rampant abuses of the government we love. Thank you.

This publication should not be construed as legal advice on any specific facts or circumstances. The contents are intended for general information and educational purposes only, and should not be relied on as if it were advice about a particular fact situation. The distribution of this publication is not intended to create, and receipt of it does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship with Protect Democracy. This publication also contains hypertext links to information created and maintained by other entities. Protect Democracy does not control or guarantee the accuracy or completeness of this outside information, nor is the inclusion of a link to be intended as an endorsement of those outside sites.

Dear civil servant,

The past week was likely exhausting and demoralizing for you. You signed up to serve the public good. Everything from trying to keep our national parks clean to helping care for sick veterans, to keeping airplanes flying safely, to being part of the effort to cure cancer. And now your government — which also happens to be your employer — is calling you a creature of the swamp and suggesting you don’t love your country.

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More concretely, you are no doubt wondering what all of the news means for you, the work you’ve been doing, and your ability to pay next month’s bills when they come due or pick up your kid in the exurbs when daycare closes at 5:30. You may be hearing conflicting takes — some supervisors are offering reassuring words, while some supervisors are sending emails alerting their staff that they have been suddenly reassigned. New memos and actions seem to be coming every minute — some in the middle of the night — and it can be hard to understand every move, let alone understand what they mean together.

Last week, we wrote to you about a spate of new executive orders and memoranda — but there were many unknowns, as we waited to see how those policies were implemented. This week, we are focusing on how the new administration’s policies have been used to affect actual government offices and civil servants’ lives — through reassignments, new rules, threats of discipline, and firings. Though some questions remain, seeing these policies in action so quickly does help us understand what they mean, and what might be coming.

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What happened?

Among other things, the administration has:

• Initiated layoffs (called reductions in force, or “RIFs”) of employees in offices that do work related to strengthening accessibility, advancing equity, building diversity, promoting inclusion, or ensuring environmental justice.

• Instituted a hiring freeze and reportedly rescinded job offers and internship offers.

• Directed agencies to prepare lists of probationary employees and “promptly determine whether those employees should be retained at the agency.”

• Asserted complete control over the Senior Executive Service, which it then demonstrated by firing and transferring members of the Senior Executive Service — the latter of which was “widely seen in the building as punishments likely to result in resignations.”

• Expanded hiring authorities that make it easier to bring in employees who are loyal to the administration.

• Issued new guidance that would pull a vast swath of the civil service into the new schedule P/C (formerly known as Schedule F) and purports to justify the president's attempted rescission of parts of OPM's 2024 regulations.

• Purged inspectors general — many of whom were appointed during the first Trump Administration — in an action that the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) has identified as legally insufficient.

• Cancelled the bulk of telework and remote work arrangements, which may undermine workforce efficacy.

• Disrupted critical scientific research by freezing or cancelling certain travel, trainings, and meetings at the National Institutes of Health.

• Dismantled and frozen funding for programs to strengthen the federal workforce, improve federal services, protect the safety of our troops, and support disabled veterans because they were designed to secure a more equitable society.

• Undermined military readiness by directing the military to take steps toward implementing a service ban on transgender individuals, while disparaging those of you who risk your lives for our country.

• Directed civil servants to report on each other, threatening adverse consequences for those who don’t.

What does it all mean?

Collectively, these actions show that it is not (just) the civil service that is under attack — it is the rule of law, which a nonpartisan professional civil service is critical in upholding.

Some of the actions seem to be plainly illegal; some are attempts to remove employees’ ability to call out unlawful acts and to exploit their sense of vulnerability so they will turn on each other; and others seem to be aimed at asserting and expanding the president’s control over much wider swaths of the civil service than Congress envisioned when it passed the Civil Service Reform Act. The president knows he needs a compliant civil service in order to fulfill his many campaign promises, and he is trying to remake the civil service so that he can plow forward without checks.

Thus civil servants are both targets of these many attacks, and casualties in a bigger war.

Another way to see these actions together is as an effort to transform the federal government from one governed by rules and laws to one governed by power. (For the political theory buffs among you, this is what academics call the transition from a “normative state” to a “prerogative state.”) It remains to be seen whether this effort will succeed.

For you, this means that you should know your rights, but unfortunately you should not expect that your employer will respect them. For example, the law says that inspectors general may not be fired without 30 days notice to Congress, but they were summarily dismissed absent such notice. Do not assume your legally-inscribed rights will protect you before a personnel action is taken.

But you can still fight to enforce your rights. Even if your rights aren’t respected before a personnel action is taken, you can often still challenge that action, for example at the MSPB. There often are short deadlines for filings, such as the 30-day deadline for adverse action appeals to the MSPB and the 45-day deadline for contacting an EEO counselor. Civil Service Strong is building out resources for helping civil servants enforce their rights, should they choose to do so. If you are a member of a union or federal employee membership association, you may have access to legal counseling as part of your membership.

What can you do?

Prepare as if you could be let go. It is absolutely hard to think about, but unexpected things have already happened to some civil servants. In our last letter, we suggested you prepare as if you might leave. Now, we know that departure has been sudden and involuntary for some civil servants.

Additional steps you might take include:

• Download documents from your eOPF folder, which can be much harder to access after you leave. Some employees are getting locked out of their phones and computers as soon as they are given notice of a personnel action.

• Save any notices you receive if you are subject to a personnel action, your position description, and material available on any federal website that you want to rely on in the future (perhaps the job posting for your position, if you were recently hired). In a pinch, you may be able to find a backup at the Internet Archive.

• If there are professional contacts you want to be able to reach if you’re no longer employed, such as colleagues you want to ask to be references, save their non-work contact information in a non-work system.

• As you consider whether to stay or leave, pay attention to how you show up. There are some who want you to feel vulnerable because people who feel vulnerable are more easily bullied and co-opted. By demonstrating that you maintain your commitment to rule-of-law norms, you help preserve that commitment in the workplace. .

• Check out our letter to civil servants from last week.

Educate yourself on your employee status and rights. There are resources that provide an overview of your basic status and rights as a federal employee:

• Many employee rights differ based on your role. Review the guidance on “reading your SF-50 to determine your service and appointment type” to better understand your role.

• If you are unsure of your status — for example, whether or not you are a probationary employee — you can review documents in your eOPF and ask your HR professional to confirm your status.

• Once you know your status, there are resources that provide overviews of your substantive and procedural employee protections, and of the process for challenging violations of those protections:

  • Merit Systems Protections Board trainings page and list of prohibited personnel practices

  • Office of Special Counsel, “Know Your Rights When Reporting Wrongs” pamphlet.

  • Equal Employment Opportunity Commission “Overview of Federal Sector EEO Complaint Process.”

• Finally, once you understand your rights and how to spot when they may have been violated, consider what you would hope to achieve by challenging an adverse employment action. Do you want to stay in the federal civil service? Publicly call out illegality to help push back on future actions? Understanding your goals and preferences up front can help you make hard decisions in the moment.

Stay engaged and up-to-date. The instinct to put your head in the sand is absolutely understandable, given how these actions affect you as an individual and as someone who cares about our country’s future. But information can be powerful: You’ll know your rights, be able to spot when rules are violated, and have considered how to respond.

To get Dear Civil Servant in your inbox — along with everything else from If you can keep it — sign up for free here. (If you want to change which series and newsletters you’re subscribed to, change your preferences here.)

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Relevant reading:

• Thor Benson, When Your Neighbor Turns You In, Wired (Nov 2022).

• Don Moynihan’s Substack, Can we still Govern?

• Our colleague Chris Crawford on How democracy survives through standing together.

And thank you, again, for your perseverance in the face of adversity. We remain grateful for your expertise, professionalism, and commitment to the American people.

Dear civil servant,

This may be a disorienting time. You likely chose your public service role because of your dedication to the mission of your agency and a desire to serve. It is more than a job. But it’s also a job — your livelihood, and perhaps what enables you to help support your loved ones. Before Inauguration Day, you saw other civil servants end up on watch lists and get publicly ridiculed by members of the incoming administration and their allies.

And now, the president himself has announced that his administration will dismantle the federal workforce through a suite of executive orders and guidance memoranda, including attacks on the Senior Executive Service, federal employee unions, and probationary employees; the initiation of processes to roll back remote work; and a re-branded Schedule F executive order — moves that seems like they might threaten your job. In the broader context, we know that safeguarding the civil service is critical to protecting democracy. You know well that American history, examples from around the world, and extensive case studies provide ample evidence that in the absence of protections for civil servants, corruption flourishes, services deteriorate, and the rule of law flounders.

You may be wrestling with what it now means to live your commitment to serving the American public while maintaining your livelihood. With each new headline, allow yourself some time to understand what is happening. Then, consider what steps you can take to protect yourself moving forward.

The rebranded Schedule F executive order and related executive actions

The new administration has issued a series of executive orders and guidance documents that affect civil servants. One of the most sweeping is a new executive order purporting to reinstate and expand its 2020 Schedule F executive order. (The employment category once known as “Schedule F” has been rebranded “Policy/Career.”) The order claims it will turn a swath of federal positions into at-will positions (the precise positions covered are not yet clear), and it purports to cast aside portions of the 2024 OPM regulations protecting civil servants.

This new order has already been challenged in court and we anticipate additional litigation in the days ahead. Our explainer from 2024 on the president’s Schedule F plans is here, and this Lawfare Primer on the Civil Service and the Trump Administration, from December, offers a more detailed look at some of the legal questions raised by Schedule F and other attacks on the civil service.

The president also issued an executive order aimed at ending telework, which directs agencies to require their employees to work full-time, in-person at their duty station. But agencies must end telework arrangements “as soon as practicable” — not immediately. And the order contemplates that there may be exceptions.

Additionally, late Monday night the Office of Personnel and Management (OPM) issued a memorandum asking agencies to provide OPM with a list of all employees who are in their initial probationary period after being hired, and it asks agencies to “promptly determine whether those employees should be retained at the agency.” The memorandum also asserts that agencies may put employees on paid administrative leave or assign them to temporary details, and it encourages agencies to use these “flexibilities” during the period of transition or reorganizations.

Since these actions often put authority in the hands of agency heads, it is too early to fully know what the guidance will mean for different federal employees.

What can you do?

It is understandable to feel overwhelmed. But there are concrete things you can do to protect yourself right now. In this letter, we link to resources, but you may find there are other similar service providers or vendors you prefer.

You can strengthen your privacy and security practices. Start by recommitting to the basics: enforce a strict divide between personal and work devices and internet/phone use.

• Use end-to-end encrypted services like Signal for personal communications.

• Use a password manager/protector such as 1Password.

• Remove personal identifiable information from your social media and set them to private. (Private companies, such as DeleteMe, Kanary, Optery, and Aura, will reduce your internet presence for you.) Consider an automated social media security and privacy service like Block Party.

• If you're worried specifically about doxxing and online harassment, consider reviewing these resources from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Washington Post, and PEN America.

You can plan for a career transition or adverse action. Having a plan for what you will do if you are let go can protect you from acting out of fear — for example, complying with directives that make you uncomfortable because you fear losing your job.

• Plan financially for the possibility of losing your job. Common advice is to have an “emergency fund” for three-to-six months of living expenses.

• Consider updating your resume and reaching out to your professional network.

• Practice good personal document hygiene: government documents belong at the office, while you should ensure you have important personal documents (tax forms, past performance appraisals, etc.) in your personal files.

• Ensure that your LinkedIn profile properly represents (and does not overstate) your role. Civil servants who the administration says occupy policy-determining, policy-making, and policy-advocating positions are likely to be early targets for losing civil service protections. Section 5(c) of the 2020 executive order and section 3(e)(ii) of the new executive order offer some sense of the types of positions that may qualify.

• Consider getting situationally helpful insurance. Some insurance companies that cater to federal employees offer benefits for civil servants who are subjected to disciplinary proceedings, suffer an adverse employment action, are sued civilly, or even those subject to congressional or criminal investigations. FEDS Protection and Starr Wright USA are two such examples.

If you decide to stay in your role, formulate a plan for how you will uphold the rule of law and deliver goods and services to the American people. You may want to:

• Refresh your understanding of your rights and obligations in your agency manual and review applicable ethics rules.

• Consider your personal red lines and what you will do if you are asked to cross them.

• Identify your community for helping you recognize when your red lines are crossed. Do you have trusted colleagues at work, friends, or a religious community that you can turn to for help navigating tricky situations, consistent with confidentiality obligations?

There are resources available to support you

The resources you need will depend on your particular situation and concerns. In addition to those listed below, the website Civil Service Strong has a number of resources and is updated regularly in response to new threats.

If you are a DOJ attorney, you may be interested in Protect Democracy’s new guide: Supporting and Defending the Constitution: A DOJ attorney’s guide to upholding ethical obligations and the rule of law.

READ MORE: The DOJ attorney’s guide to Trump’s Washington

If you need legal counsel, the National Employment Lawyers Association, Metropolitan Washington Employment Lawyers Association, and Federal Circuit Bar Association all have resources for finding attorneys. Some private law firms that often work with federal employees include the Alden Law Group (ScheduleF@AldenLG.com), Gilbert Employment Law, and Kalijarvi, Chuzi, Newman & Fitch.

If you are interested in learning more about whistleblowing, and the protections in law that exist for disclosing violations of the law, the Government Accountability Project has useful information and an intake application. The House Office of the Whistleblower Ombuds also has extensive resources, including lists of other organizations that support whistleblowers. You may also be interested in the report Caught Between Conscience and Career, a guide for federal government whistleblowers.

Stay up-to-date on developments affecting the federal workforce

If you are not a subscriber to this newsletter, sign up here.

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If you are interested in learning when Civil Service Strong launches its “centralized hub for individuals facing harassment by private individuals, or fearing firing, reassignment, or retaliation,” you can sign up here. If you belong to a union or other employee association, they may have useful resources and information. Additionally, below are some news sites, blogs, and newsletters that provide real-time information on the threats federal civil servants face:

• Federal News Network and GovExec are indispensable news sources for federal employees.

• The FedAgent newsletter about issues affecting the federal law enforcement and homeland security community and the FedManager newsletter about issues affecting the federal civil service. Both are written by the firm Shaw, Bransford, & Roth.

And thank you, so much, for your patriotism and service to the country. The decisions you are confronting right now are not easy ones. But ensuring you are informed and have taken steps to prepare for eventualities can help ensure that you make the best possible decisions.

Federal prosecutors at the Department of Justice face a daunting task ahead.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump routinely promised to use the department to investigate and prosecute his personal and political enemies. Some of his nominees have made similar promises.

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Directing prosecutions as a political tool is — obviously — illegal; any court in the country should agree. If Trump seeks to follow through on these promises, that could put DOJ attorneys in an unenviable position, trapped between the president on one side and the law and ethics on the other.

This tension is heightened by the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States, which gave the president a new type of criminal immunity for certain official acts. But DOJ attorneys have no such immunity. They remain bound by a number of rules, and the consequences for breaking those rules can be significant.

So what are these attorneys to do?

Because lawyers tend to appreciate reference materials, here are two resources on how to navigate the coming dilemmas that may be helpful to bookmark and refer back to in the coming months.

• Supporting and Defending the Constitution: A DOJ attorney’s guide to upholding ethical obligations and the rule of law. This guide provides an overview of the sources of authority that govern federal prosecutors, options for reporting suspected misconduct, and possible consequences for failing to comply with ethical obligations.

• Protecting the Department of Justice from Political Interference after Trump v. United States: Exploring the constitutional principles at stake. This paper explores the reasons to preserve the norm of DOJ independence in specific enforcement matters following Trump v. United States, and explains why this norm is not only constitutional in character, but vital to the rule of law and to our democracy.

For everyone else who would rather not read long reports, there are the three key takeaways.

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1. Any orders or requests to investigate and prosecute political enemies will be unlawful

The Constitution and federal law place limits on how the DOJ may select targets for investigation or prosecution.

As the attorney guide explains:

Even if it is possible to articulate some basis for an investigation or prosecution — as will often be the case — the selection of a particular target can violate various provisions of the Constitution if that selection is based on the target's identity or lawful conduct.

For instance, if DOJ selects somebody for prosecution based on criticism of Trump or his policies, that could run afoul of First Amendment protections. Similarly, selection based on a bare desire to harm the target could violate the Equal Protection Clause. And even prosecutions that aren’t necessarily biased at the outset may still become constitutionally infirm due to “governmental misbehavior” during the course of the prosecution.

Further, if the president were to interfere in a specific matter against a specific target, he may run afoul of the Take Care Clause — a structural feature of our democracy meant in part to protect the executive branch from usurping power that properly belongs to Congress.

As the second paper explains, we should be careful not to read the Trump v. United States decision to do more than it actually does:

T]he majority’s language is circumspect, saying only that the president may “discuss matters with DOJ officials,” and its holding is limited, for now, to the question presented in the case: whether and to what extent a former president is immune from criminal prosecution. The majority stopped short of declaring that the president has the power under the Constitution to direct the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute specific individuals.

And the decision certainly does not say that the president’s power over DOJ — whatever that may turn out to be — overrides other provisions of the Constitution, including those found in the Bill of Rights.

2. DOJ attorneys are not immune — even when Trump is

Federal prosecutors are bound by the Executive Branch Standards of Conduct, the DOJ Standards of Conduct, conflict of interest and financial disclosure statutes, the Hatch Act, and a variety of other regulations. And as attorneys licensed to practice law, they are bound by their state’s rules of professional responsibility — essentially, a very specific code of conduct for lawyers. Being sanctioned by a court or a state bar could devastate an attorney’s career — to say nothing of the possibility of facing civil liability or, in the most extreme cases, criminal charges.

In criminal prosecutions, the most severe punishments are often reserved for the kingpin, while the lower-level foot soldiers are given sentences that reflect their more limited role in the enterprise. The Supreme Court’s recent immunity decision flips that principle on its head: If misconduct occurs at the Justice Department, the president could be immune, while the line attorneys who carried out his directives could be left holding the proverbial bag.

We should be clear: DOJ attorneys may end up between a rock and a hard place after the Supreme Court removed one of the major incentives for the president to abide by the law. That’s the real problem for federal prosecutors. As the guide notes, “DOJ attorneys now work within a system in which the head of the executive branch enjoys a special level of immunity for rulebreaking, but they do not.”

Even if it feels unfair that they could take the blame — and bear the consequences — for wrongdoing ordered by the president or his allies, that’s precisely what could happen.

3. When federal prosecutors and other DOJ staff honor their oaths and their ethical obligations, the legal community must have their backs

Despite all these challenges, most DOJ attorneys will put patriotism and the rule of law over politics and continue to serve the public interest, regardless of what happens in the White House. But they need — and deserve — the support of the legal profession and civil society writ large when they do so.

That’s in part why Protect Democracy published Supporting And Defending the Constitution — to provide a resource as DOJ attorneys navigate ethical challenges in the months and year ahead.

But there’s more we can all do.

Writing recently in the The New York Times, the co-founder of the DOJ Gender Equality Network (an employee-run group within DOJ) had a number of practical suggestions:

Data-removal companies that specialize in taking down personal information online could offer free or discounted plans to federal employees who are being harassed or at risk of harassment. . . Concerned citizens could urge their elected representatives to promote legislation that protects civil servants and oppose draconian bills that would harm them. Those with money to spare could donate to organizations that work to protect public servants.

And, of course, expert service providers like lawyers, mental health professionals, and others can offer low- or no-cost services to federal employees who need them.

Whatever the next administration has in store for the Justice Department, federal prosecutors are going to have to uphold their legal and ethical obligations. It’s up to all of us to ensure that they don’t do so alone.

At the tail end of his first term, Donald Trump took aim at America's 150-year-old independent civil service. An executive order issued in October 2020 would have gutted protections for civil servants and prioritized loyalty to Trump over expertise in the hiring process. Now, Trump and those in his orbit (including the authors of “Project 2025”) promise to reinstate this policy — widely referred to as “Schedule F” — in the first days of a second Trump administration. 

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Trump’s Schedule F is not original — it borrows from other authoritarians. 

Indeed, almost every 21st Century autocrat around the world has pursued some form of a civil service purge. Like Trump, these leaders view an independent civil service as an obstacle to consolidating power. And so they move quickly to undermine protections for civil servants and replace them with hand-picked loyalists. 

Read more: Trump’s Schedule F plan, explained

These attacks on civil servants by autocratic leaders elsewhere can help us understand how similar purges would likely play out during a second Trump term. 

In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has decimated the country’s civil service

Trump has publicly admired Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who has taken extreme steps toward replacing independent civil servants with party loyalists. 

After returning to office in 2010, one of Orbán’s first acts was to dismantle civil servants’ labor protections, allowing political appointees to fire independent career employees without cause. Though the country’s Constitutional Court eventually overturned this law, its ruling came too late. The government passed a modified version of the law in 2011, by which point civil servants belonging to any opposition party were purged from the government.  

Since then, more than 25% of Hungary's civil servants have been replaced by inexperienced Orbán loyalists. Civil service purges have spanned the entire government, weakening the country’s education system, pension services, and environmental protections. By replacing expert civil servants with inexperienced cronies, corruption has flourished, and even “basic public services such as water, sanitation, and electricity” are no longer reliable.  

In Hungary, Orbán’s takeover of the country’s civil service facilitated his consolidation of power by eliminating any potential pushback from experts and enriching his political allies. 

Poland’s autocratic government followed Orbán’s steps to gut civil service protections and replace career experts with party loyalists  

Just one month after returning to power in 2015, Jarosław Kaczyński and his Law and Justice Party (PiS) took aim at Poland’s civil service protections. 

Kaczyński made good on his promise of creating “Budapest in Warsaw,” as the government eliminated the competitive hiring process and prioritized filling positions with PiS loyalists. But this wasn’t the first time PiS had undermined Poland’s civil service. In 2006, the then-PiS government amended the Civil Service Act to quadruple the number of political appointees, decreasing expertise and increasing corruption. Clearly, Kaczyński and his PiS allies believed there was more work to be done upon returning to office a decade later.

By 2023, the Polish civil service had become an “instrument” of PiS control. Corruption flourished, exemplified by the massive “cash-for-visas” scheme in which upwards of 250,000 visas were reportedly issued to non-E.U. citizens in exchange for bribes. The scheme was orchestrated by PiS loyalists, who pressured career diplomats to fast-track visas and skip the usual vetting process. Over eight years, the PiS government shifted decision-making authority from career civil servants to political appointees, decreasing effective governance and coinciding with what Freedom House has called the “swiftest democratic decline” across Europe. 

The speed at which PiS targeted and politicized the civil service upon retaking office in 2015 underscores its perceived importance for facilitating autocratic power grabs — making Trump’s promises to revive Schedule F early in a second term all the more alarming. 

Brazil’s autocratic President Jair Bolsonaro fired over 3,500 career officials on his third day in office

In an attempt to purge the government of potential opposition supporters, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro fired over 3,500 officials on his third day in office. 

During Bolsonaro’s four years in power, career experts were regularly dismissed for political reasons and quickly replaced with unqualified loyalists. Military officials were increasingly appointed to positions typically held by policy experts to bolster support for Bolsonaro within the civil service.

Attacks on the civil service helped Bolsonaro shift policy toward his far-right agenda. For instance, the proliferation of loyalists and “sidelining” of civil servants made it easier for the Bolsonaro government to dismantle policies related to human rights, sustainability, and deforestation. The militarization of Brazil’s bureaucracy coupled with continuous civil service purges aimed to stamp out any potential opposition that could challenge Bolsonaro’s agenda and his hold on power. 

As in Hungary and Poland, Bolsonaro’s dismantling of Brazil’s civil service was one of the first steps in his quest to consolidate total power. After his loss in Brazil’s 2022 election, a crowd of his supporters stormed government buildings in an attack reminiscent of the violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Like his “great friend” Trump, Bolsonaro continued to denigrate his country’s democracy even as he left office. 

Attacks on the civil service are a common tactic among autocrats

Beyond Hungary, Poland, and Brazil, attacks on the civil service constitute one of the major “administrative tools” modern autocrats use to dismantle democracy. 

In Russia, Vladimir Putin cast civil servants as an early enemy of his government and abandoned reforms aimed at professionalizing the civil service. To be clear, the Russian bureaucracy of the 1990s was far from an efficient and independent civil service. Still, Putin-backed laws in the early 2000s made matters worse. The new laws rolled back political neutrality and merit-based hiring requirements to enforce top-down control over civil servants. Nearly a quarter of a century later and the “policy wonks” in Russia’s civil service are essential to Putin’s power vertical — “they are totally beholden to Putin for their position, but Putin owes them nothing.” 

Similarly, the politicization of Venezuela’s civil service under presidents Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro cemented the country’s transition to authoritarianism. Chávez eliminated perceived non-loyalists from government service, while Maduro’s purges have become a hallmark of the current regime. Both Chávez and Maduro recognized the importance of controlling the country’s oil revenues to consolidate power, which they achieved through subordinating formerly independent agencies and civil servants. These attacks have created a “politicized, loyalist, but largely unqualified bureaucracy,” hardening the authoritarian system that dominates the country today. 

Aspiring autocrats regularly use their platforms to attack civil servants, which often coincides with democratic backsliding. In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has established personalist rule — “the domination of the political realm by a single individual” — since coming to power in 2003. To maintain this personalist system, Erdoğan has implemented mass civil service purges, replacing policy experts with loyalists. And Mexico’s outgoing populist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) dismissed thousands of federal employees and attempted to politicize the country’s independent election authority. AMLO consolidated control over many of Mexico’s independent institutions, and new president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum previously supported his replacement of expert staff with loyalists. 

Read more:  The Civil Service, Explained

Key Takeaways From Abroad 

Though these cases are non-exhaustive, they highlight civil service attacks as a key strategy of autocratic actors. 

While these attacks aren’t all carried out in the same way, they usually come early in an autocrat’s tenure, or when the autocrat aims to expand their hold on power. Following this playbook, Donald Trump has promised to both authorize civil service purges — through Schedule F — during the first days of a second term, and increase his personal power. 

As part of Protect Democracy’s Authoritarian Playbook, experts identified the seven key tactics that autocrats regularly employ in their pursuit of power. Around the world, civil service purges are specifically designed with these tactics in mind, facilitating autocratic takeovers: 

• Civil service purges politicize independent institutions by elevating political loyalists whose only allegiance is to the autocrat. In Hungary, Orbán’s “political cleansing” of the civil service eliminated experts and introduced loyalty requirements across the government. And in Brazil, Bolsonaro systematically investigated and dismissed civil servants with ties to the opposition party, to quash any potential dissent within the government. 

• Politicization of the civil service clears the way for executive aggrandizement because the malleable loyalists installed in policymaking positions defer power to the autocrat. Eventually, the autocratic executive controls the entire governing apparatus — enabling the kinds of personalist systems established by Putin in Russia and Erdoğan in Turkey. 

• Civil service purges are often initiated by an autocratic disinformation campaign aimed at career bureaucrats. Much like Trump’s obsession with the “deep state,” global autocrats use similar tactics to scapegoat civil servants for their own leadership failings. In turn, co-opted government agencies and media outlets promote regime propaganda and disinformation to inflate the autocrat’s popularity.

• Dismantling the civil service helps autocrats target marginalized communities by weaponizing agencies against perceived “enemies” and gutting government services. In Hungary and Poland, the consolidation of power by the far-right has enabled state-sponsored attacks on women and the LGBTQ+ community. Under Bolsonaro, civil servants working to protect human rights in Brazil were persecuted as he cast marginalized groups as early adversaries of his government. When civil servants are replaced with loyalists, the autocrat has free reign to target vulnerable communities with impunity and stoke violence against any opposition. 

• Replacing expert civil servants with political loyalists allows the autocrat to corrupt elections. The speed at which autocrats target civil servants helps them politicize independent institutions early, including those tasked with overseeing elections. In Mexico, López Obrador targeted the country’s independent National Electoral Institute (INE) throughout his time in office. Despite large protests, he is still pushing reforms that would politicize independent institutions like the INE and concentrate his party’s executive power before his successor takes office.

In short, civil service purges are key to carrying out the authoritarian agenda. Attacks on the civil service deteriorate governing outcomes and accelerate autocratization — underscoring the importance of maintaining an independent civil service in the face of Donald Trump’s continued threats. 

Most of us understand that, in the 21st century, democracies tend to die not at the barrel of a gun but at the stroke of a pen. Modern dictators gain power through elections, not coups. 

But when it comes to what autocrats do to dismantle democracy once in power, most coverage is still drawn to flashy, combative, and even violent tactics. Which makes sense! The most alarming autocratic strategies are often the most dangerous ones. Our Authoritarian Playbook for 2025 details why risks like politicized investigations, domestic deployment of the military, and refusal to leave office are a) quite plausible and b) quite scary. 

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That said, an authoritarian project can also be advanced through quieter bureaucratic and administrative tactics. Today, I want to talk about two of those ostensibly boring and bureaucratic risks that are — once you dig in — anything but mundane. Something called “impoundment” and a proposal known as “Schedule F.” 

Because I think these technical-sounding names often serve as smokescreens for nefarious plans, I’m going to talk about these ideas as what they really are: “unlawful withholding of federal funds” and “civil service purges.” 

Let’s go one by one. 

“Impoundment” is just another way to say “unlawful withholding of federal funds” 

Last week, the Washington Post’s Jeff Stein and Jacob Bogage reported on how “Trump plans to claim sweeping powers to cancel federal spending.” As they write:

The Constitution gives control over spending to Congress, but Trump and his aides maintain that the president should have much more discretion — including the authority to cease programs altogether, even if lawmakers fund them. 

This is no idle threat. Suggesting the executive branch has the power to unilaterally withhold funds appropriated by Congress and to defund federal programs and agencies would dramatically reshape the balance of power between our branches of government. Congress would cease to control spending and would instead play a mere advisory role to the president. They could place effective limits on spending, but that’s it. 

Even more importantly, a unilateral presidential power to withhold funds would create enormous risks of abuse and retaliation. Just a few scenarios: 

1. States and jurisdictions would be at risk of having federal funding cut for political reasons. Your city dared vote against the president’s party in the midterms? Whoops, there goes your federal education funding.

2. Universities and companies that receive federal funding — even indirectly — could be easily extorted by the president. Better not let your students or employees criticize or protest against the administration lest federal support just stops arriving. 

3. Allied foreign countries would face pressure to serve the U.S. president’s personal interests, or else. Want to make sure the foreign aid package comes through? Better find a way to assist the president’s reelection campaign. 

These are not hypothetical.

In order: 1. Trump and allies have openly threatened to withhold federal funds from Democratic states and cities for nakedly political reasons. 2. Trump tried to defund the Postal Service to force it to raise shipping rates on Amazon in retaliation for the Washington Post’s coverage of his administration (Jeff Bezos owns both companies). 3. As president, Trump unlawfully withheld aid to Ukraine to try to force the country to dig up dirt on Joe Biden (reach back into your memory — this was the entire scandal of the first impeachment). 

A lot of that is beside the point, because Trump’s entire argument for impoundment is wrong. As three of Protect Democracy’s spending abuses experts, Michael Angeloni, William Ford, and Conor Gaffney, write in “The impoundment threat, explained”:

Since 1974, a federal statute called the Impoundment Control Act has barred the president from unilaterally canceling funds. But Trump and his advisers think the president can do so anyway, in spite of the laws Congress has passed. They believe the president has an overriding and inherent constitutional power to refuse to spend — or “impound” — appropriated funds. 

But Trump’s position is wrong. There is no inherent power to impound. The Constitution’s text and structure and the history of presidential impoundments make this clear. 

They explain lots of reasons why Trump’s claims are incorrect and ahistorical. And they note that presidential attempts to withhold funds have lost in federal courts over and over again. 

My favorite example from their piece: Trump and his allies often cite a supposed impoundment of funds for gun boats by Thomas Jefferson. But the underlying appropriations law authorized Jefferson to spend “a sum not exceeding fifty thousand dollars” for the purchase of “a number not exceeding fifteen gun boats.” In other words, when Jefferson didn’t spend the money, it was permissible because Congress said he didn’t have to spend it. 

All that said — as plainly wrong as Trump’s arguments are — if I were a lawyer for a state, city, county, company, university, government contractor, or any other institution receiving federal funds, I would be preparing for these attacks and planning to push back. You know, just in case… 

Read their whole piece here.

What is Schedule F, anyway?

The federal government doesn’t just spend money. It also does things. To do those things, it employs over 2 million people who go to work each day keeping our country safe, our water clean, our food supply reliable, and our air travel disaster-free. They get the Social Security, unemployment, disability, and Medicare reimbursement checks out on time. And they collect the taxes that pay for all this. 

The vast majority of those federal employees — all except for the roughly 4,000 political appointees at the top of the system — aren’t political. They’re hired based on merit, not loyalty. They stay in place for Republican and Democratic administrations because they don’t work for the politicians. They work for the American people. Yes, the politicians get to tell them what to do through policy and legislation, but the whole system is designed so that individual civil servants can exercise independent, expert judgment without fear of political reprisals. 

This is called the “civil service,” and it’s one of the great achievements of modern democracy. It was intentionally designed to protect against the corruption and incompetence of the cronyism, patronage, and spoils systems that preceded it. 

For more on the history of why this system exists, read: The Civil Service, Explained.

Which is where the second bureaucratic risk comes in. What if large numbers of those people just got… purged. Fired. Canned. And replaced by legions of political cronies. 

This is a real proposal. It’s called “Schedule F.” 

Again, that’s just the technical term for what would be the largest civil service purge in American history. As Alex Tausanovitch, Michael Angeloni, Erica Newland, and William Ford all write:

In October 2020, the Trump Administration issued an executive order that would have stripped protections from civil servants perceived as disloyal to the president and encouraged expressions of allegiance to the president when hiring. This effort is referred to as “Schedule F” because that was the name of the new employment category that the executive order created.  

The administration claimed the authority to create Schedule F based on statutory language that exempted certain positions “of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character” from employment protections. Previous administrations and Congress always understood the language to apply only to a smaller number of positions traditionally filled by political appointees. 

Because Trump did not remain in office, it is unknown how many federal employees his administration would have swept into Schedule F, or how many would have been fired and replaced. Experts have put the possible numbers in the tens or hundreds of thousands. The Trump official credited with the idea to create Schedule F estimated that it could apply to as many as 50,000 federal workers. Some Trump allies told Axios it would not be necessary to fire that many workers because firing fewer would produce the desired “behavior change.” 

Trump has made it clear that, if elected, reinstating Schedule F — restarting the civil service purges — is one of his first priorities. 

Read more on Schedule F. 

When the government works for the president, not the people

What scares me most about these two proposals by Donald Trump is how symbiotic they are. They’re different parts of the same project to weaponize the government against anyone who disagrees with the president. 

As Alex, Michael, Erica, and William write: 

Schedule F is an effort to redirect regulatory, administrative, and investigatory functions of the government away from the public interest and toward the president’s interests. This makes it easier for an aspiring authoritarian American president to abuse his power to punish, intimidate, and silence opponents by making government aid, contracts, licenses, merger approvals, tax benefits, permits, civil penalties, relief aid, grants, and regulatory waivers contingent on showing personal fidelity. 

A cronyistic civil service makes it easier to go after enemies, and the power to withhold funds makes those cronies much more powerful. 

Liberalism for the 21st Century

A nuance I often remind myself — we don’t just need to protect democracy, we need to defend liberal democracy. In the classical sense of the L-word. Openness, pluralism, human rights, checks and balances, executive restraint, and protections for minorities, they’re all just as important as majority rule (and, also in the classical sense, core to “conservatism”). 

An important conference in DC next month (July 11-12) explores the state of liberalism in the 21st century and how it can go back on offense. Really superb lineup of speakers. Check it out. 

(The panel I’m most excited for: “Electoral Systems for a Diverse Liberal Democracy.” Nerd alert.)

ABA Task Force for American Democracy

Highly recommend following the American Bar Association’s new democracy task force, led by an all-star group of notables. They have a wide variety of background resources, all of which are highly readable and accessible. Two papers I recommend in particular:

• Reviving the American Tradition of Fusion Voting, by Lee Drutman, Tabatha Abu El-Haj, and Beau Tremitiere

• Proportional Representation, by Ruth Greenwood, Drew Penrose, and Deborah Apau

What else we’re tracking: 

• The “self-pardon” question is coming. You know why, you know the stakes. But, as Grant Tudor and Justin Florence argue in Lawfare, federal courts have already largely answered it. 

• The president’s son was convicted on federal gun charges. Biden again vowed that he would respect the verdict and not pardon Hunter. (Jonathan V. Last: “It is worth reminding people exactly how correctly Joe Biden handled the entire ordeal surrounding his son.”)

• Yesterday, Donald Trump met with the Business Roundtable, one of the most powerful organizations of private sector leaders. (Reminder: markets appear to be dangerously underpricing the current US political and stability risks.)

• “We have the rule of law so as not to have a culture of revenge.” Tim Snyder on revenge culture and the Supreme Court. 

• “Wither the Senate?” — Lee Drutman ponders the thorniest reform question in American democracy. 

• Amanda Carpenter took over Tim Miller’s podcast at The Bulwark yesterday and was kind enough to have me on. Give it a listen. 

• France called snap legislative elections scheduled for just weeks from now after the far-right surged in EU elections. (A reminder from Anne Applebaum: “No, Trump is not the American Le Pen. He's worse.”)

• I spend lots of time (probably too much) thinking about democracy, water, the American West, housing, homelessness, climate change, and, where we all go, *waves hand* you know, from here. So I found this fittingly sprawling George Packer story in The Atlantic on the nation’s fastest-growing city worth every word. 

Thirteen days before he lost the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump tried to remake the federal government. 

On Oct. 21, he issued an executive order creating a new category of federal employment, known as Schedule F, in which his administration claimed public servants could be hired and fired at will. An estimated 50,000 career federal employees — the people who ensure the safety of the drugs we take and the food we eat — would have been swept into this category and, had the order survived legal review, purportedly stripped of their employment protections. 

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New hires for positions that demand both expertise and experience would not have been selected on the basis of either; the order dispensed with such requirements. Trump’s vision was governance by fiat: if the president says a hurricane bound for the Atlantic coast will instead hit Alabama, no federal employees should tell Alabamians otherwise and expect to keep their job. 

Schedule F’s intent was clear: to threaten civil servants into submission and create a cadre of officials loyal not to the Constitution and laws, but to Trump personally. Their mission of serving the American people effectively, upholding laws and honoring their oaths faithfully would have taken a back seat to toeing the partisan line. 

But Trump ran out of time. 

Schedule F could not be implemented before he left office. President Biden revoked the order. And today, the Biden administration finalized a rule that will strengthen key protections for civil servants and protect against future efforts to institute Schedule F or something like it (Trump has announced his plan to reissue Schedule F “On Day One” of a second term). 

The new rule, issued by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) with extensive input from us and other commenters, does three things: 

• First, it affirms and clarifies that under the Civil Service Reform Act, only a small number of political appointees could be lawfully moved into a category like Schedule F, which applied to positions of a “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character.” This decades-long view reflects the meaning of that term of art at the time Congress enacted that language in 1978. 

• Second, the rule reinforces the case law and “longstanding interpretation[] and practice” holding that when civil servants are involuntarily moved from one part of the civil service to another, they retain the rights and employment protections they had accrued in their original position. 

• Third, the rule outlines procedures that agencies must follow when moving employees from one part of the civil service to another, and it establishes a new right to appeal an involuntary movement that purports to strip an employee of their rights and protections.

As one of us recently wrote in the New York Review of Books, “[t]his isn’t just an employees’ rights issue. What’s at stake is democracy itself.” 

What’s at stake is whether we live in a society characterized by the rule of law or the whims and rancor of partisans under the command of an authoritarian administration. Today, the Biden administration took a stand for the former.