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New rule could make it much harder for Trump to overhaul federal workforce if he wins in November
Washington — The government’s chief human resources agency issued a new rule on Thursday making it harder to fire thousands of federal employees, hoping to head off former President Donald Trump ‘s promises to radically remake the workforce along ideological lines if he wins back the White House in November.
The Office of Personnel Management regulations will bar career civil servants from being reclassified as political appointees, or as other at-will workers, who are more easily dismissed from their jobs. It comes in response to “Schedule F,” an executive order Trump issued in 2020 that sought to allow for reclassifying tens of thousands of the 2.2 million federal employees and thus reduce their job security protections.
President Biden nullified Schedule F when he took office. But if Trump were to revive it during a second administration, he could dramatically increase the number of federal employees — some 4,000 at the moment — who are considered political appointees and typically change with each new president.
How many employees might have been affected by Schedule F is unclear. However, the National Treasury Employee Union used freedom of information requests to obtain documents suggesting that federal workers such as office managers and specialists in human resources and cybersecurity might have been subject to reclassification – meaning the scope of Trump’s order might have been broader than previously believed.
The new rule could counter a future Schedule F order by spelling out procedural requirements for reclassifying federal employees, and clarifying that civil service protections accrued by employees can’t be taken away regardless of job type. It also makes clear that policymaking classifications apply to noncareer, political appointments and can’t be applied to career civil servants.
“It will now be much harder for any president to arbitrarily remove the nonpartisan professionals who staff our federal agencies just to make room for hand-picked partisan loyalists,” National Treasury Employees Union President Doreen Greenwald said in a statement.
Sharply different takes on the new rule
Good government groups and liberal think tanks and activists have cheered the rule. They viewed cementing federal worker protections as a top priority given that replacing existing government employees with new, more conservative alternatives is a key piece of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s nearly 1,000-page playbook known as ” Project 2025.”
That plan calls for vetting and potentially firing scores of federal workers and recruiting conservative replacements to wipe out what leading Republicans have long decried as the “deep state” governmental bureaucracy.
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which has led a coalition of nearly 30 advocacy organizations supporting the rule, called it “extraordinarily strong” and said it can effectively counter the “highly resourced, anti-democratic groups” behind Project 2025.
“This is not a wonky issue, even though it may be billed that way at times,” Perryman said. “This is really foundational to how we can ensure that the government delivers for people and, for us, that’s what a democracy is about.”
The final rule, which runs to 237 pages, is being published in the federal registry and is set to formally take effect next month. The Office of Personnel Management first proposed the changes last November, then reviewed and responded to 4,000-plus public comments on them. Officials at some top conservative organizations were among those opposing the new rule, but around two-thirds of the comments were supportive.
If Trump wins another term, his administration could direct the Office of Personnel Management to draft new rules. But the process takes months and requires detailed explanation on why new regulations would be improvements – potentially allowing for legal challenges to be brought by opponents.
Rob Shriver, deputy director of the Office of Personnel Management, said the new rule ensures that federal employee protections “cannot be erased by a technical, HR process” which he said “Schedule F sought to do.”
“This rule is about making sure the American public can continue to count on federal workers to apply their skills and expertise in carrying out their jobs, no matter their personal political beliefs,” Shriver said on a call with reporters.
He noted that 85% of federal workers are based outside the Washington area and are “our friends, neighbors and family members,” who are “dedicated to serving the American people, not political agendas.”
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Moscow — Former Royal Ballet star Sergei Polunin, famous for his tattoos of Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday announced that he plans to leave Russia. The Ukrainian-Russian dancer was one of the most prominent stars who backed Russia’s unilateral 2014 annexation of Crimea and its military assault on Ukraine. He was rewarded with prestigious state posts.
In a rambling, misspelled message on his Instagram account, Polunin wrote: “My time in Russia ran out a long time ago, it seems at this moment that I have fulfilled my mission here.”
The post first appeared Sunday on his little-read Telegram account.
Ian Gavan/Getty
Polunin, 35, did not give a specific reason for leaving but said that “a time comes when the soul feels it is not where it should be.”
He said he was leaving with his family — his wife Yelena and three children — but “where we will go is not clear so far.”
In the summer, the dancer complained of a lack of security and said he was being followed.
Polunin, who was born in Ukraine, backed Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea — a prelude to the ongoing, full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Putin launched in February 2022.
The dancer was granted Russian citizenship in 2019. He was appointed acting head of a dance academy in occupied Crimea’s biggest city, Sevastopol, and director of the city’s opera and ballet theatre, for which a large new building is under construction.
Just last year he was decorated by Putin for his role in popularizing dance. But in August he was replaced as head of the dance academy by former Bolshoi prima Maria Alexandrova, and a week ago, Russia’s arts minister Olga Lyubimova announced his theater director job would go to singer Ildar Abdrazakov.
This came after on December 9 Polunin published a social media post saying he was “very sorry for people” living in the heavily bombarded village near Ukraine’s city of Kherson, where his family originates from, and that “the worst deal would be better than war.”
Ian Gavan/Getty
Aged 13, Polunin won a scholarship to train at the Royal Ballet School in London and became its youngest ever principal dancer.
With his tattoos — including a large depiction of Putin’s face emblazoned prominently on his chest — and his rebellious attitude, he became known as the “bad boy of ballet” and caused a sensation by resigning from the Royal Ballet at the height of his fame in 2012.
Later he made a 2015 hit video to Irish musician Hozier’s song “Take Me to Church” and was the star of a 2016 documentary called “Dancer.”
He moved to perform at Moscow’s Stanislavsky Musical Theatre’s ballet before launching a solo career, starring in dance performances in roles including the mystic Grigory Rasputin.
In 2019 he posed for AFP with a large tattoo of Putin on his chest which he later supplemented with two Putin faces on either shoulder. He also has a large Ukrainian trident on his right hand.
This year he took part in Putin’s campaign for reelection as a celebrity backer.
Washington — The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to consider South Carolina health department’s effort to cut off funding from Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions, wading into another dispute over access to the procedure in the wake of its reversal of Roe v. Wade.
The case, known as Kerr v. Edwards, stems from the state’s decision in 2018 to end Planned Parenthood South Atlantic’s participation in its Medicaid program. Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, directed the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services to deem abortion clinics unqualified to provide family planning services and end their Medicaid agreements.
Planned Parenthood operates two facilities in the state, one in Charleston and the other in Columbia, and provides hundreds of Medicaid patients with services like physicals, cancer and other health screenings, pregnancy testing and contraception. Federal law prohibits Medicaid from paying for abortions except in cases of rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother.
Planned Parenthood and one of its patients, Julie Edwards, sued the state, arguing that cutting off its funding violated a provision of the Medicaid Act that gives beneficiaries the right to choose their provider.
A federal district court blocked South Carolina from ending Planned Parenthood’s participation in its Medicaid program, and a U.S. appeals court upheld that decision, finding that Edwards could sue the state to enforce the Medicaid Act’s free-choice-of-provider requirement.
The legal battle has already been before the Supreme Court in the past, with the high court last year ordering additional proceedings after deciding in a separate case that nursing home residents could sue their state-owned health care facility over alleged violations of civil rights.
After reconsidering its earlier decision, the three-judge appeals court panel ruled unanimously in March that Edwards’ lawsuit against the state could go forward and said South Carolina couldn’t strip Planned Parenthood of state Medicaid funds.
“This case is, and always has been, about whether Congress conferred an individually enforceable right for Medicaid beneficiaries to freely choose their healthcare provider. Preserving access to Planned Parenthood and other providers means preserving an affordable choice and quality care for an untold number of mothers and infants in South Carolina,” Judge Harvie Wilkinson wrote for the 4th Circuit panel.
South Carolina officials asked the Supreme Court to review that decision, marking the third time the case has been before the justices. The justices agreed to take up the question of whether “the Medicaid Act’s any-qualified provider provision unambiguously confers a private right upon a Medicaid beneficiary to choose a specific provider.”
South Carolina is among the more than two dozen that have passed laws restricting access to abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision reversing Roe v. Wade. In South Carolina, abortion is outlawed after six weeks of pregnancy with some exceptions.
Several states have also enacted laws blocking Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funding, including Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi and Texas.
