As former and future President Donald Trump geared up his reelection campaign in 2023, he pledged to fire “rogue bureaucrats” by stripping their civil service protections.
“I will wield that power very aggressively,” he said in a video address.
On Wednesday, Trump signed a far less aggressive version of that proposal that strips key civil service protections from 8,000 top-level federal employees, rather than the 50,000 workers the administration projected earlier this year.
While it falls short of a wholesale remake of government, his executive order for reclassification addresses a longstanding contention by Republicans that senior non-political employees who shape ...