If the proposal were implemented, workers would no longer be able to seek redress through independent review boards.
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Published February 9, 2026
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is making it harder for fired federal employees to get rehired by restricting their right to appeal their firings to an independent review board.
The changes were proposed as part of a government plan released by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on Monday. Under the proposal, federal employees seeking to challenge their firings would have to appeal directly to OPM, which reports to the president, rather than to an independent agency known as the Merit System Protection Board (MSPB).
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The MSPB acts as an intermediary between federal employees and the government and has been in place since 1978. After President Trump took office, the board’s caseload jumped 266 percent between October 2024 and September 2025. Federal employees who were downsized and bought out in early 2025 received their last paycheck at the end of September.
If enacted, the proposal would build on President Trump’s broader push to shrink the federal government and limit workers’ ability to challenge these decisions. Last year, the administration forcibly laid off about 317,000 federal employees.
The move comes amid a separate proposal announced last week to reclassify high-level career civil servants as “at-will” employees. The changes would give him broader authority to fire career employees who don’t align with the sitting president’s policies, affecting about 50,000 workers at the nation’s largest employer.
The directive, outlined in a more than 250-page document, allows workers to be fired if they “deliberately violate the president’s directives.”
“Congress gave OPM the authority to determine how troop reduction appeals are handled, and this provision fulfills that responsibility,” an OPM spokesperson told Al Jazeera in a statement. “This replaces a time-consuming and costly process with a single, streamlined review by OPM experts, meaning agencies can rebuild without litigation for years, and employees can get faster and fairer resolutions when mistakes occur.”
The proposal was also made in light of the administration’s attempts to dismiss political appointees from the previous administration without just cause. Since last year, the White House has been trying to fire Federal Reserve President Lisa Cook over allegations of mortgage fraud.
Cook challenged the decision in federal court, which ruled that the president did not have the authority to fire her. The White House has appealed, and the case is currently before the Supreme Court.
Although the court has not yet ruled, a ruling in the president’s favor would make it easier to remove political appointees who do not align with a particular administration’s policies.
