Trump Invokes Schedule F, Making It Easier to Fire Federal Employees | CLIP | Crossroads

president Donald Trump is taking moves right now that would reclassify the appointment and let's say jobs of some political appointees and employees Now look basically what he's doing he's removing civil service protections from a lot of government positions making it easier for these federal workers to be fired by Donald Trump And in a public statement he said this will help him root out corruption and have the government quote run like a business Uh meaning he's going to run it like the apprentice Right you're fired Now look first off on Trump's new plan with schedule F here's what he wrote on Truth Social He said "Following my day one executive order the Office of Personnel Management will be issuing new civil service regulations for career government employees Moving forward career government employees working on policy matters will be classified as quote schedule policycareer and will be held to the highest standards of conduct and performance If these government workers refuse to advance the policy interest of the president or are engaging in corrupt behavior they should no longer have a job He said "This is common sense and will allow the federal government to finally be run like a business." And then Trump said "We must root out corruption and implement accountability in our federal workforce." Now according to the fact sheet on this released by the White House this is going to affect around 50,000 federal employees which is approximately 2% of the federal workforce And it notes that these employees will keep their competitive status and are not required to personally or politically support the president but must faithfully implement the law and the administration's policies Meaning you can believe whatever you like You can love the president you can hate him but you got to do your job And if you're violating that and inhibiting the functions of the government you can and possibly will be fired Now this is not the first time Trump has used schedule F You might remember he also did this during his first term as president Here's some more details from Axios It says even before Trump officially launched his second presidential run reports abounded that he planned to resurrect schedule F during his second term It says during his campaign Trump vowed to slash the size of the deep state federal government and fire rogue bureaucrats and career politicians He notes the new rule dubbed schedule policy/career You could say it's technically a little different from schedule F Basically the same thing will reclassify many career career civil servants as at will employees making them easier to remove from their post And it notes that this new rule will impact workers involved in policym Two White House officials familiar with the plan told Axios and it says flashback Weeks ahead of the 2020 presidential election Trump issued an executive order known as schedule F that would have reclassified tens of thousands of federal workers whose roles involve policymaking functions It notes the new category made it easier to fire federal employees in civil servant positions and career posts who are considered disloyal to the president Another way of saying that they're not carrying out the role of their jobs and intentionally inhibiting the role of the president And it notes that former President Biden rescended the executive order after he took office Trump just brought it back Now let's go a bit more into what Trump is saying here though Remember during the 2024 campaign the Project 2025 proposal from the Heritage Foundation was framed as being part of Trump's big plan Now both sides denied there was any involvement Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 saying he didn't even read it Uh during a debate with Kla Harris in the campaign trail he said that I have nothing to do with Project 2025 This is a group of people that got together They came up with some ideas I guess some good some bad but it makes no difference Trump said he didn't read it Wasn't his plan It was somebody else's But look that plan also noted how Donald Trump could potentially use schedule F to fire around 50,000 federal government employees And the proposal on that would have mainly taken aim at the so-called deep state the mid-level bureaucrats right and the argument with this is basically this Trump has been inhibited by individuals just basically refusing to carry out orders Uh during his first term in office this was one of the bigger challenges he faced He would say "Hey take this paper bring it to this person." The person would take the paper and throw it in the trash There were a lot of reports like that He'd tell this agency "Implement this policy." They would slow walk it they would just choose to not do it and Trump even though he g be carried out or would be just massively slowwalked Uh Trump now for example is dealing with some of this where there are allegations that he's for example getting rid of DEI policies and there are insiders within different government agencies who've been caught on like undercover cameras with Project Veritas or uh James O'Keefe Media for example and they've said in in hidden camera discussions that they have just renamed certain policies in order to sidestep the office of the president meaning that there's a lot of agencies and mid-level bureaucrats who are choosing to either slowwalk the president or block the president using their roles Now there's two issues you have with that One of them is well how do you hold these people accountable the problem you have is a couple points One uh with when it comes to government unions it's very difficult debatably impossible to fire you have to like have done something really really bad to get fired and even then you're probably going to get a golden parachute and pensions and the whole other nine yards Uh typically at the very worst they'll just reassign you to something else They normally don't fire them The other side is the president typically does not have that power Um and so the President Trump would not have the ability to basically go after officials who are not listening to him meaning there's no accountability meaning there's no risk meaning they can do these things without any kind of risk of you know push back or whatever And so the concern on the Trump somewhat entrenched and they argue that this is the only way they can take action to do this Now the other side would say what do you mean the president is going to be firing people who don't listen to what he says and they take this as effectively Trump you know purging disloyal members of government and you know of course with the interest of putting in people who will follow his orders and uh some would argue that damages the you know checks and balances The issue is of course this is not checks and balances within the function of government Checks and balances exist between the different branches of government and of course different elected roles not just individuals choosing to not do something But like part of the challenge Trump faces also government employees can just choose to not do this basically And we've seen this with reports of workers trying to get around his ban on DEI just rename things or whatever else You know New York Post had stories on this Others have had reports on this as well And this new policy seems to take direct aim at that whole issue In Trump's statement he writes quote "If these government workers refuse to advance the policy interests of the president or are engaging in corrupt behavior they should no longer have a job." That's the exact quote from Trump And he also said quote "We must root out corruption and implement accountability in our federal workforce." Another big issue here of course being u if you don't do a good job in you know for example business you're probably going to get fired If you don't do a good job in government nothing's going to happen to you right and so Trump when he notes this he notes the government should be run more like a business That's a big deal And again one of the main differences with the business is if you refuse to listen to your boss if you get a directive if you're told "Hey go take this paper and deliver it to this person," and you just throw your paper in the trash or you know you don't pull your own weight the business can and probably will fire you Now the issue with a lot of government jobs is they can't fire you like that And so you have people who can just choose to not deliver that paper You can have people who sloww walk the implementation of something You can have people who like there were reports coming out saying that you know removing a login function from a website They're saying it's going to take a 100 days because you know these are government contractors and the Doge department goes in and they do it in like 3 hours And so some things that shouldn't take a long time take a very long time Some argue it's because you know you're expected to kind of uh not rock the boat You're expected to kind of sit there and help everybody else sloww walk things because nobody wants to work that hard Right now so Trump's use of schedule F in this context which is now called right schedule policy/career It changes the classification of certain government jobs And by changing the classification it makes it so the president would have the power to fire them This is important When the president comes into office what does he do well there are a lot of positions where the president is able to replace the people in those positions This is why presidents come in with their whole cabinets ready to go right you have a lot of appointed positions You have a lot that need to be cleared by Congress The president comes in purges all the people they don't want like even even some pretty high level positions Very common for them to do this and they put their own people in Trump has effectively expanded that He's made it so that even mid-level bureaucrats even some normal government jobs are reclassified in such a way that they're effectively appointed positions right to an extent right and so by changing the classification of some of many government jobs he can get rid of them And the argument with a lot of this has been that this is not so much the boots on the ground like just the regular guys A lot of this is the midlevel bureaucrats the the mid-level managers and such not the top level so much because a lot of times those are the ones they can remove the guys in the middle And those are typically your entrenched you know iron rice bowl types They can never lose their jobs Trump has made it so he can fire all of them if he wants to Now look already some of these powers are currently in place Now among Trump's first moves as president he signed an executive order that did reclassify many government employees as political hires And basically before he left office the first time around Trump put schedule F into place This is not technically new Now when Biden came into office he got rid of that He revoked Trump's executive order And then when Trump did his you know day one orders eliminating basically all of Biden's executive orders Trump also got rid of that order from Biden that got rid of schedule F And so Trump after having removed Biden's removal is now putting the thing back in place And that's what's happening right