By President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday reclassifying approximately 8,000 senior federal employees, a significant expansion of the administration’s authority to remove career workers serving in influential policy positions.
The order places the affected employees into a newly created “schedule policy/career” category finalized by the Office of Personnel Management earlier this year, according to a report by The Daily Mail. Workers included in the category will generally be treated as at-will employees, allowing the federal government to dismiss them without going through the lengthy procedures traditionally required to terminate career civil servants.
The action represents the latest step in Trump’s broader effort to reshape the federal bureaucracy and reduce the size of the government workforce. The initiative has unfolded alongside the work of the Department of Government Efficiency, commonly known as DOGE, and a series of administration actions aimed at making federal agencies more responsive to the elected president.
“It’s been a long-standing problem that it’s almost impossible to fire a federal employee, even in cases of serious misconduct,” James Sherk of the Domestic Policy Council said during the public signing ceremony. “And that’s a particular problem if you’re in a senior policy-influencing role.”
Trump praised Sherk as one of the architects of the initiative.
“What this [order] does is basically treat those employees like private sector workers,” Sherk explained to the outlet.
Before the order, approximately 4,000 federal employees were subject to at-will hiring and firing procedures. The new action increases that figure to roughly 12,000.
The administration has pursued an aggressive campaign to reduce the federal workforce since Trump returned to office in January. Some of those efforts have faced legal challenges, and several terminations have been reversed by court orders. Elon Musk, the technology billionaire who has played a prominent role in the DOGE initiative, has described the broader effort as only “a little bit successful.”
A White House fact sheet said dismissals under the new classification would occur “without respect to political affiliation.” Administration officials have framed the order as a management reform intended to improve accountability among employees who hold substantial influence over federal policy.
The number of federal employees has reached the lowest numbers since the 1960s.
The number of employees immediately affected by the order is substantially smaller than earlier estimates. In February, the Office of Personnel Management projected that as many as 50,000 positions could eventually be affected by the administration’s reclassification plans.
Trump signed the order during an Oval Office ceremony, continuing a sustained effort to give the executive branch greater control over the federal workforce and the senior career employees responsible for implementing the administration’s policies.
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