The Trump administration is moving forward to eliminate job protections for about 50,000 government workers

On Thursday, the administration of Donald Trump completed an overhaul of the US government’s personnel system, according to a government statement, which will give the president the power to hire and fire approximately 50,000 federal employees.

The overhaul, issued by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), fulfills a presidential campaign promise that Trump would strip job protections from federal workers who his team deems to be “influencing” government policy.

The move represents the biggest change in the laws governing civil servants in more than a century. Trump planned what was originally called “Plan F” late in his first administration, but his loss in the 2020 election prevented him from following through on the plan.

Trump will have the power to choose which government positions will lose their jobs, according to the OPM statement.

The new policy wwill be reviewed by a federal judge. Public service unions and their allies sued in January to halt the policy before it was fully developed. Federal judges halted the trial while the Trump administration finalized the transition.

The court challenge will resume in the coming days, said Skye Perryman of Democracy Forward, one of the groups holding the case.

“We will go back to court to stop this illegal law and we will use all legal tools to hold this officer accountable,” he said in a statement.

‘If you’re a lawyer… send me a DM’

OPM Director Scott Kupor said Thursday the change “ensures that taxpayer dollars support workers who deliver efficient, responsive and high-quality services.”

Budget data points to little, if any, cost savings. The government has spent nearly $244 billion on federal salaries since Trump returned to the White House, three percent more than it did during the same period under Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, according to a recent Reuters analysis of Treasury Department data.

Kapoor said the final rule “clearly prohibits political support, loyalty testing or political discrimination.”

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But Democrats in Congress and other workers who are suing the government have disputed the claims. For example, the Justice Department has moved to fire career lawyers and FBI agents who previously worked on investigations involving Trump, even though those jobs were assigned to them.

The walkouts have created a backlog and staff shortages, the Associated Press reported last month after interviewing more than a half-dozen laid-off employees at the Justice Department.

Senior leaders asked for job applications, some of those workers said. Last week, Chad Mizelle, acting general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security and former Justice Department official under Trumpraised eyebrows with an open message to rent a phone on social media platform X.

“If you are a lawyer, you are interested in being a lawyer [assistant United States attorney] and I support President Trump and the anti-crime agenda, DM me,” Mizelle said.

Joyce Vance, a former federal prosecutor, said in the same forum: “Send me a DM if you want to be a federal prosecutor that’s not how government works.”

The lowest rate in ten years

OPM estimates the loss of 317,000 federal jobs by fiscal year 2025. As a result, the US federal workforce fell to its lowest level in at least a decade, according to government data published last month, a result of Trump’s campaign to shrink the government.

The progressive Center for Budget and Policy Initiatives released last month said that based on data from the Department of Labor, public sector workers by the end of 2025 will have fallen to the smallest part of the US legally employed workforce, with data going back to the 1930s.

Trump said last month at the White House that his administration has “cut millions of people out of government pay.”

I am not sad because now they are getting jobs in the private sector and they are getting double money, triple money,– US President Donald Trump

“I am not sad because now they are getting jobs in private companies and sometimes they are getting double or triple money,” he said.

Trump added that those laid off were “getting factory jobs,” as data from his administration pointed to a decline in manufacturing jobs.

The US government employs 2.1 million workers, according to OPM statistics. The federal government has long been seen as a stable employer, with employees often spending decades working within corporate America.

Trump and his team wanted to change that at the start of his second term, as he argued that the federal government was bloated and dysfunctional.

Ahead of his 2024 re-election, the Heritage Foundation led a number of conservative groups in donating ideas to Trump’s expected second administration, with its Project 2025 plan promising to “dismantle the administration.”

Data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) contradicts the claim of a bloated public service, at least in terms of per capita numbers. The United States recently had a share of public sector employment that was four percent lower than the OECD average, which is just over 14 percent.

Also, comparative data shows that the US has the most political appointees in terms of number and percentage, almost of all Western governments.

Trump has tapped billionaire CEO Elon Musk to help ease the pressure, as several of his businesses appear to be embroiling him. Young employees in Musk’s Department of Public Works are accused of accessing confidential data of Americans.

Cuts have hit nearly every major federal agency in the past year, according to OPM statistics. Many have lost more than a quarter of their staff, including the Department of Education, Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development. The Department of Homeland Security is an exception, and the demographics have been in flux since Trump took office.

Public employee unions and their allies sued over the resulting layoffs. Many cases are yet to appear in court.

Musk, who clashed with Trump in the months after taking the job, told a podcast in December that DOGE’s efforts “have been somewhat successful.”

DOGE is no longer a central organization, Kupor told Reuters in November.

OPM’s statement on Thursday also said the Trump administration is changing whether to apply long-standing legal protections that prohibit US government agencies from retaliating against whistleblowers.

Government agencies will be responsible for suspending job protection for their employees whom they suspect of wrongdoing, such as breaking the law or wasting money. That would be a change from the past, when an independent office known as the Office of the Special Counsel handled disclosure of reports from most federal employees.