President Donald Trump and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) are moving forward with “Schedule F,” a policy to make it easier to remove workers from federal agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Fierce Healthcare has confirmed.
Implementing Schedule F will deprive 50,000 federal employees of civil service protections by classifying them as “at-will” workers. Once a final rule is issued, another executive order will be released to directly move positions under the final rule’s authority.
The OPM’s proposed rule will give authority to the government to cut workers over performance that does not align with the administration’s priorities without procedural delays.
“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,” the White House says.
Trump reinstated an executive order, revoked by President Joe Biden, outlining plans to enact Schedule F from the end of his first term Jan. 20. The National Treasury Employees Union sued (PDF) the HHS, the OPM and other agencies, claiming this action rids workers hired by merit of due process rights.
The HHS’ workforce is already 20,000 members short of where it started at the beginning of the Trump administration, as the department continues to face the aftermath of probationary worker firings, early retirement and buyout offers, reductions in force and an agencywide reorganization. Simultaneously, the HHS has been required to comply with a federal hiring freeze (extended another 30 days as of a Thursday order) and government unions getting squeezed out of protections that once seemed immovable.
These changes will make the department more efficient and adaptable, the Trump administration says, for an institution often maligned as a slow-acting bureaucracy. The White House said imposing Schedule F is necessary to ensure career officials carry out an administration’s lawful policy priorities. Current leadership—like HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Department of Government Efficiency leader Elon Musk—also view the HHS as a department that has overseen worse health outcomes and rising costs in recent decades.
Many current and former officials vehemently disagree, arguing the long-term impacts caused by canceling research grants and eliminating agencies wholesale will cause the U.S. to cede its scientific prowess on the world stage and lead to an unprecedented brain drain.
A recently leaked budget showed the game plan for the HHS’ reorganization, which would cut the federal health budget by about $40 billion, including large reductions to the National Institutes of Health budget. It also creates the Administration for a Healthy America to swallow up offices eliminated from other agencies as a result of the reorganization.
News of the Schedule F policy was first reported by Axios.
Publisher: Source link
