Front row seats to the end of the merit system
Politicization reaches federal hiring and retention
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.
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.
If you are interested in applying for federal jobs but have concerns about the essay questions, please fill out this survey on federal jobs.
If you have information about how the essay questions are being used in the hiring process, please fill out this survey on hiring practices.
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.
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As a civil servant, I thank you for publicizing what we are going through. The loyalty essays and new requirements for completing probation have many/most of us highly alarmed to say the least. This is how you build a bureaucracy that will facilitate fascism.
At what point do we decide that we have no longer kept it?