The Office of Personnel Management has proposed a new rule that could fundamentally reshape the Federal civil service, not for the better.

The proposal would create a new category called "Schedule Policy/Career." Employees in these roles, which include critical policy-making and advising jobs, would lose long-standing legal protections against wrongful dismissal. They would become at-will employees, able to be terminated without the right to an appeal.

On the surface, the rule claims it will make removing poor performers easier. But the reality is far more dangerous. This will open the door to political purges of career experts who have served the American people across administrations of both parties.

This would undo more than 140 years of civil service protections that began after the ratification of the Pendleton Act of 1883. Before this act was implemented, American politics operated on the spoils system. This allowed officeholders to give their allies government jobs in return for financial and political support. HERE is a Wikipedia article about the Pendleton Act.

History and global experience show us the risks:

• A spoils system will result in widespread corruption and inefficiency
• Hungary's governmental takeover of the civil service after 2010 led to democratic backsliding. Read about it HERE
• Political control over public administration and the judiciary in Poland triggered EU sanctions for rule-of-law violations. HERE is an article from Yale about the issue

Even in the U.S, watchdog groups have warned that politicising the bureaucracy harms government performance and erodes public trust.

Good governance requires accountability and protections against political retaliation. This proposal forgets the second half of that equation.

The public comment period for this rule closes May 23, 2025.

If you care about keeping government professional, fair, and focused on the public good, now is the time to speak up.

✅Submit your public comment here: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/04/23/2025-06904/improving-performance-accountability-and-responsiveness-in-the-civil-service#

Bonus Claims and Answers

Claim: The President should be able to fire poor performers and those who undermine elected policies.

Response: Nobody disputes the need for accountability. However, accountability must be balanced with protections against political retaliation. Otherwise, you risk trading professional performance for partisan loyalty. This is precisely what civil service reforms were designed to prevent.

Claim: This will return the system to how it was historically

Response: False. Before the Pendleton Act, the "at-will" system led to massive instability, patronage hiring, inefficiency, and even presidential assassination. History teaches that merit protections were not a luxury but necessary survival reforms.

Claim: Most employees will still be hired on merit

Response: Hiring procedures matter, but without protections after hire, employees will be judged based on loyalty, not competence. Even the best hires can be fired for politically inconvenient opinions without meaningful job security.

Claim: Agencies can't remove poor performers under current rules. The system is broken.

Response: Procedures can be reformed without destroying basic protections. Congress can act to streamline discipline without reverting to a 19th-century spoils system.

This proposal is not "surgical reform," it is a demolition.

This rule doesn't fix the civil service, it guts it. It would turn a system built to serve the Constitution into one built to serve the man in power. That is not accountability, that's autocracy.

Choose Love

-- Michael Heidelberger