The Office of Personnel Management’s new rules reclassify senior officials as at-will employees and could fire them for “deliberately subverting the president’s directives.”
Published February 5, 2026
President Donald Trump’s administration has finalized an overhaul of the U.S. government’s civil service system, giving him authority to hire and fire an estimated 50,000 career federal employees, according to a government statement.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on Thursday plans to create a new category for high-level career employees involved in carrying out administration policy, The Wall Street Journal reported. Employees in this category would be exempt from long-standing civil service protections that make it difficult to fire federal employees.
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According to the newspaper, OPM officials said part of the purpose of the rule is to “punish” federal employees who stand in the way of President Trump’s policies. It added that this new category applies to senior positions that are essentially policy-making, policy-making, or policy-advocacy.
“You cannot be a conscientious objector in the workplace in a way that interferes with your ability to perform your job,” OPM Director Scott Cooper said in an interview with the Journal.
“These positions will remain nonpartisan, general positions; however, with the exception of adverse action proceedings and appeals, they will be discretionary positions. This will allow agencies to expeditiously remove employees from critical positions who engage in misconduct, perform poorly, or obstruct the democratic process by intentionally subverting the President’s directives,” the more than 250-page directive from OPM asserts.
The federal government has long been considered a stable employer, with staff typically working for U.S. government agencies for decades. Trump and his team tried to change this early in his second term, arguing that the federal government was bloated and inefficient.
In 2025, the White House will aggressively reduce the federal workforce, with more than 300,000 people leaving the federal workforce at the nation’s largest employer.
OPM did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
