WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has begun making one of the controversial personnel changes for government employees that was spelled out in the conservative Project 2025 blueprint for his second term.
He's starting the process of reclassifying 50,000 federal employees under what's known as Schedule F, which can make civil servants into political appointees or other at-will workers, who are more easily dismissed from their jobs. That means they'll have less civil service protection.
Remaking the federal workforce is part of a larger Trump administration push to dramatically shrink the size of government and exert more control over it.
The proposal follows an executive order Trump signed shortly after retaking the presidency, and was being published in the Federal Register. Trump announced the latest move online.
“If these government workers refuse to advance the policy interests of the President, or are engaging in corrupt behavior, they should no longer have a job,” he wrote on his social media site. “This is common sense, and will allow the federal government to finally be ‘run like a business.’”
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said the move could ultimately undermine the federal government’s effectiveness.
“President Trump’s action to politicize the work of tens of thousands of career federal employees will erode the government’s merit-based hiring system and undermine the professional civil service that Americans rely on,” he said in a statement.
Administration officials argue that it’s necessary to increase accountability in the governmental workforce. The change is expected to make it easier to replace career employees who have “important policy-determining, policy-making, policy-advocating, or confidential duties,” according to a White House fact sheet.
The fact sheet said the plan “empowers federal agencies to swiftly remove employees in policy-influencing roles for poor performance, misconduct, corruption, or subversion of presidential directives, without lengthy procedural hurdles.”
Once the rule is finalized, the president plans to sign another executive order to conclude the process.
The Office of Personnel Management said the change “aims to strengthen accountability among career federal employees while streamlining removals for misconduct or poor performance.”
“Policy-making federal employees have a tremendous amount of influence over our laws and our lives,” the agency’s acting director, Chuck Ezell, said in a statement. “Such employees must be held to the highest standards of conduct. Americans deserve a government that is both effective and accountable.”
It's the latest step in Trump's battle against what he describes as “the deep state,” which frustrated his goals in his first term. Now he's moving more swiftly to fire people and reshape the government bureaucracy — steps that have alarmed labor unions, good-government advocates and political opponents, who worry about him consolidating power and violating worker rights.
Bringing back Schedule F was a key component of Project 2025, which was led by the Heritage Foundation think tank and fueled by former Trump administration officials. It was a nearly 1,000-page handbook designed to commandeer, reshape and do away with what Republicans deride as a bureaucracy opposed to Trump's key governing goals.
A key part of that plan was firing as many as 50,000 federal workers and replacing them with conservatives ideologically aligned with Trump and eager to ensure his approach to governing comes to fruition.
Kevin Owen, a lawyer who represents federal employees, further warned that reclassified workers would lose whistleblower rights.
“It’s going to have a complete chilling effect,” Owen said.
During his first term, Trump issued a Schedule F order in 2020 that sought to reclassify tens of thousands of federal employees. President Joe Biden issued his own order upon taking office that nullified Trump's original action.
Then, last year, the Office of Personnel Management — which acts as the government's human resources arm — issued a new rule designed to make it harder to reclassify and dismiss thousands of federal employees in an attempt to essentially “Trump-proof” career positions.
The Biden-era rule barred career civil servants from being reclassified as political appointees or as other at-will workers.
Advocates said at the time that the rule would slow Trump's ability to reinstate Schedule F should he win the 2024 election. But Trump signed another executive order on Inauguration Day in January reinstating his 2020 order — and clearing the way for Friday's action.
OPM said newly reclassified roles “will remain career positions filled on a nonpartisan, merit basis but will be classified as at-will positions." It said that will exempt them "from the standard, often burdensome adverse action and appeals procedures that currently make it difficult to address poor performance or misconduct.”
President Donald Trump arrives at a swearing in ceremony for Dr. Mehmet Oz to be Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, April 18, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
U.S. forces have boarded another oil tanker in the Caribbean Sea. The announcement was made Friday by the U.S. military. The Trump administration has been targeting sanctioned tankers traveling to and from Venezuela.
The pre-dawn action was carried out by U.S. Marines and Navy, taking part in the monthslong buildup of forces in the Caribbean, according to U.S. Southern Command, which declared “there is no safe haven for criminals” as it announced the seizure of the vessel called the Olina.
Navy officials couldn’t immediately provide details about whether the Coast Guard was part of the force that took control of the vessel as has been the case in the previous seizures. A spokesperson for the U.S. Coast Guard said there was no immediate comment on the seizure.
The Olina is the fifth tanker that has been seized by U.S. forces as part of a broader effort by Trump’s administration to control the distribution of Venezuela’s oil products globally following the U.S. ouster of President Nicolás Maduro in a surprise nighttime raid.
The latest:
Richard Grenell, president of the Kennedy Center, says a documentary film about first lady Melania Trump will make its premiere later this month, posting a trailer on X.
As the Trumps prepared to return to the White House last year, Amazon Prime Video announced a year ago that it had obtained exclusive licensing rights for a streaming and theatrical release directed by Brett Ratner.
Melania Trump also released a self-titled memoir in late 2024.
Some artists have canceled scheduled Kennedy Center performances after a newly installed board voted to add President Donald Trump’s to the facility, prompting Grenell to accuse the performers of making their decisions because of politics.
Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum says that she has asked her foreign affairs secretary to reach out directly to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio or Trump regarding comments by the American leader that the U.S. cold begin ground attacks against drug cartels.
In a wide-ranging interview with Fox News aired Thursday night, Trump said, “We’ve knocked out 97% of the drugs coming in by water and we are going to start now hitting land, with regard to the cartels. The cartels are running Mexico. It’s very sad to watch.”
As she has on previous occasions, Sheinbaum downplayed the remarks, saying “it is part of his way of communicating.” She said she asked her Foreign Affairs Secretary Juan Ramón de la Fuente to strengthen coordination with the U.S.
Sheinbaum has repeatedly rebuffed Trump’s offer to send U.S. troops after Mexican drug cartels. She emphasizes that there will be no violation of Mexico’s sovereignty, but the two governments will continue to collaborate closely.
Analysts do not see a U.S. incursion in Mexico as a real possibility, in part because Sheinbaum’s administration has been doing nearly everything Trump has asked and Mexico is a critical trade partner.
Trump says he wants to secure $100 billion to remake Venezuela’s oil infrastructure, a lofty goal going into a 2:30 meeting on Friday with executives from leading oil companies. His plan rides on oil producers being comfortable in making commitments in a country plagued by instability, inflation and uncertainty.
The president has said that the U.S. will control distribution worldwide of Venezuela’s oil and will share some of the proceeds with the country’s population from accounts that it controls.
“At least 100 Billion Dollars will be invested by BIG OIL, all of whom I will be meeting with today at The White House,” Trump said Friday in a pre-dawn social media post.
Trump is banking on the idea that he can tap more of Venezuela’s petroleum reserves to keep oil prices and gasoline costs low.
At a time when many Americans are concerned about affordability, the incursion in Venezuela melds Trump’s assertive use of presidential powers with an optical spectacle meant to convince Americans that he can bring down energy prices.
Trump is expected to meet with oil executives at the White House on Friday.
He hopes to secure $100 billion in investments to revive Venezuela’s oil industry. The goal rides on the executives’ comfort with investing in a country facing instability and inflation.
Since a U.S. military raid captured former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro on Saturday, Trump has said there’s a new opportunity to use the country’s oil to keep gasoline prices low.
The full list of executives invited to the meeting has not been disclosed, but Chevron, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips are expected to attend.
Attorneys general in five Democratic-led states have filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s administration after it said it would freeze money for several public benefit programs.
The Trump administration has cited concerns about fraud in the programs designed to help low-income families and their children. California, Colorado, Minnesota, Illinois and New York states filed the lawsuit Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The lawsuit asks the courts to order the administration to release the funds. The attorneys general have called the funding freeze an unconstitutional abuse of power.
Iran’s judiciary chief has vowed decisive punishment for protesters, signaling a coming crackdown against demonstrations.
Iranian state television reported the comments from Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei on Friday. They came after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei criticized Trump’s support for the protesters, calling Trump’s hands “stained with the blood of Iranians.”
The government has shut down the internet and is blocking international calls. State media has labeled the demonstrators as “terrorists.”
The protests began over Iran’s struggling economy and have become a significant challenge to the government. Violence has killed at least 50 people, and more than 2,270 have been detained.
Trump questions why a president’s party often loses in midterm elections and suggests voters “want, maybe a check or something”
Trump suggested voters want to check a president’s power and that’s why they often deliver wins for an opposing party in midterm elections, which he’s facing this year.
“There’s something down, deep psychologically with the voters that they want, maybe a check or something. I don’t know what it is, exactly,” he said.
He said that one would expect that after winning an election and having “a great, successful presidency, it would be an automatic win, but it’s never been a win.”
Hiring likely remained subdued last month as many companies have sought to avoid expanding their workforces, though the job gains may be enough to bring down the unemployment rate.
December’s jobs report, to be released Friday, is likely to show that employers added a modest 55,000 jobs, economists forecast. That figure would be below November’s 64,000 but an improvement after the economy lost jobs in October. The unemployment rate is expected to slip to 4.5%, according to data provider FactSet, from a four-year high of 4.6% in November.
The figures will be closely watched on Wall Street and in Washington because they will be the first clean readings on the labor market in three months. The government didn’t issue a report in October because of the six-week government shutdown, and November’s data was distorted by the closure, which lasted until Nov. 12.
FILE - President Donald Trump dances as he walks off stage after speaking to House Republican lawmakers during their annual policy retreat, Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
