This isn’t about campfires, oh no. This is so much more satisfying than a roaring fire on a cold winter’s night:
Approximately 50,000 federal workers in “policy-influencing” positions will lose specific protections against firings and become more at-will employees in the next month, per a new Trump administration rule announced Thursday.
The new rule, published by the Office of Personnel Management, will move senior career civil servants in “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating” positions into the Schedule Policy/Career category, formerly known as Schedule F.
Going forward, federal workers in those roles will lose their ability to appeal firings, suspensions or disciplinary action to an independent board.
Administration officials can dismiss those employees if they engage in “misconduct, poor performance or obstruct the democratic process by intentionally subverting Presidential directives.”
I think I speak for all my Readers when I say that while 50,000 is a nice round number, I’m thinking that 200,000 is a much nicer, rounder number. But I’m open to other, more ambitious suggestions.
Of course, the response has been predictable:
The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing non-postal federal workers, said in a statement that the rule would “chill protected speech” and “weaken enforceable protections against retaliation.”
“This rule is a direct assault on a professional, nonpartisan, merit-based civil service and the government services the American people rely on every day,” AFGE President Everett Kelley said.
Two issues jump off the page.
Firstly, let’s just suggest that right off the bat, the very idea of a government-employee union is an abomination. It’s time the AFGE was abolished.
Secondly, if the current crop of bureaucrats had actually behaved like a “professional, nonpartisan, merit-based civil service” over the past, oh, eighty years then this action wouldn’t have been necessary. But they haven’t, so here we are.
The bitter joke is that the civil service has always been the structure whereby Democrat policy has been implemented regardless of which party is in the White House. This new Executive Order from DJT is simply rectifying that attitude, and it’s about damn time, too.