COLUMN: Trump Is Destroying the Civil Service, and No One Sees the Earthquake Coming

How Does This New Classification Work?

The 255-page document published by the OPM explains that federal agencies can now transfer positions that impact public policy from the traditional competitive civil service to the Schedule Policy/Career category. Employees in this new category lose standard protections: no mandatory notice, no right to appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board, and no job security. OPM justifies this change by stating that it aims to strengthen employee accountability and improve the U.S. government’s responsiveness to long-standing challenges in performance management. The agency assures that these positions will continue to be filled on a nonpartisan basis. But this promise rings hollow when you consider that the president can now fire these employees without justification.

Nonpartisan, really? Who can believe that for even a second? When you give the president the power to fire people without recourse, you automatically create a system where job security depends on political loyalty. It’s a given. It’s inevitable. And that’s exactly what Trump is after.

A Direct Attack on the Public Service

The main union for federal employees, the AFGE (American Federation of Government Employees), immediately denounced this rule as a direct attack on the civil service. Its president, Everett Kelley, stated in a press release that the government wants to replace competent professionals with politicized lackeys. The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) was even more scathing. Its president, Doreen Greenwald, called the rule a dangerous step toward a system of political patronage that Congress had expressly rejected 142 years ago. She asserts that the plan turns nonpartisan federal jobs into political favors for loyalists and unconstitutionally deprives workers of their due process rights. The Government Accountability Project, through Louis Clark, denounced this as an illegitimate and undemocratic effort to reimpose a system of patronage for hundreds of thousands of government positions.

These unions aren’t crying wolf for no reason. They see what many refuse to see: 142 years of reforms—which were put in place precisely to prevent the administration from changing political colors with every election—are being undone. The Pendleton Act of 1883 created a civil service based on merit, not political connections. Trump wants to turn back the clock. And that should concern us all.

Accountability or Political Purging

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt defended the new rule during a press briefing. She believes it is a good thing and that if people do not do their jobs well, if they do not show up, if they do not work hard on behalf of the president, they are not welcome. Supporters of the rule, such as Michael Rigas, former director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), argue that it is an attempt to address concerns that federal employees themselves have raised year after year. James Sherk, a former White House labor advisor, maintains that if this were truly a system of patronage, the administration would have created many Schedule C positions (traditional political appointments). For them, it’s a matter of accountability, not partisan loyalty.

Working hard on behalf of the president. That phrase sticks in my throat. Civil servants do not work for the president. They work for the country, for the citizens, for the public interest. Their loyalty lies with the Constitution, not with one man. But in Trump’s worldview, everything revolves around him. You’re either with him or against him. There is no gray area, no possibility of professional neutrality.

A Change That Goes Almost Unnoticed

Beyond the issue of layoffs, the new rule contains another major change that has received less media attention. The whistleblower process will now be handled within the agencies themselves, rather than by an independent body. This change is far from insignificant. Whistleblowers play a crucial role in detecting corruption, abuses of power, and violations of the law within the government. By transferring the handling of their complaints to the very agencies they are exposing, an obvious conflict of interest is created. How can an employee feel protected when it is their own employer who decides whether their complaint is legitimate? This change risks creating a massive deterrent effect, discouraging civil servants from reporting problems for fear of retaliation.

This is perhaps the most insidious change in the entire rule. We don’t talk much about whistleblowers, but they are essential to a healthy democracy. They are the ones who exposed Watergate, NSA abuses, and financial scandals. And now, their independent protection is being taken away. It’s like asking the fox to guard the henhouse. It can’t end well.

The DOGE Commission and Its Devastating Effects

This new rule is part of a broader effort to dismantle the U.S. government apparatus. Since Trump returned to power, the DOGE Commission, led by Elon Musk, has waged an aggressive campaign to reduce the workforce. Entire agencies have been eliminated. International aid has been drastically cut. Incentives to leave have multiplied. The numbers speak for themselves: 317,000 departures in 2025—an exodus unprecedented in the recent history of the U.S. civil service. This new rule completes this process by giving the president the legal tools to accelerate these departures even further. The 50,000 civil servants affected by the Schedule Policy/Career now know they can be fired at any time, with no recourse. This sword of Damocles will inevitably push some to leave on their own, anticipating the inevitable.

Elon Musk heading a government commission. When I think about it, it seems surreal. A billionaire who has never worked in public service, who runs private companies with an iron fist, who fires thousands of people via email… he’s the one we’re entrusting with reforming the government. And he’s applying the same brutal methods he used at Twitter. Except that in this case, we’re not talking about a private company. We’re talking about the government of a democracy.

When History Repeats Itself—for the Worse

The system of political patronage that Trump seeks to reinstate is not new in American history. Before the Pendleton Act of 1883, government positions were handed out as rewards to supporters of the president-elect. This was the spoils system. Every change in administration led to a complete shake-up of the civil service. Qualifications mattered little. Only loyalty mattered. This system led to massive corruption, chronic inefficiency, and ultimately to the assassination of President James Garfield in 1881 by a job seeker who had been turned down. It was this tragic event that prompted Congress to pass the Pendleton Act, creating a merit-based civil service. For 140 years, this system has generally worked, despite its imperfections. And now, Trump wants to turn back the clock.

It is often said that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. But in this case, it’s worse. Trump isn’t repeating history out of ignorance. He’s repeating it deliberately, with full knowledge of the facts. He knows what happened before 1883. He knows why the Pendleton Act was passed. And he doesn’t care. Because to him, personal loyalty is more important than the public interest.

Beyond civil servants, the entire system is teetering

This rule does not affect just 50,000 civil servants. It affects the very nature of American democracy. An independent and professional civil service is one of the pillars of the rule of law. It is what ensures that laws are enforced consistently, regardless of who occupies the White House. It is what prevents a president from turning the administration into an instrument of personal revenge or partisan favoritism. When the civil service is politicized, the door is opened to all kinds of abuses. Decisions are no longer made based on expertise or the public interest, but on political calculations. Civil servants spend more time trying to please their superiors than doing their jobs. And in the end, it is society as a whole that pays the price. Public services deteriorate. Trust in institutions collapses. Democracy is weakened.

I think of future generations—my children, their children. What kind of country are we leaving them? A country where expertise is scorned, where personal loyalty trumps competence, where institutions serve one man rather than the people? That is not the America I know. That is not the America I want.

When Democracies Watch with Concern

This reform has not gone unnoticed abroad. Western democracies are watching what is happening in the United States with a mixture of fascination and concern. In Europe, where civil services are generally well protected, this development is seen as a major democratic setback. Public administration experts from several countries have expressed concern, pointing out that the politicization of the civil service is often the first sign of a slide toward authoritarianism. We have seen this scenario play out in other countries: Hungary under Viktor Orbán, Poland under the PiS, and Turkey under Erdoğan. In each case, the takeover of the civil service was followed by a gradual erosion of checks and balances and democratic freedoms. The United States is not immune to this dynamic.

It is strange to see America, which has always presented itself as the beacon of democracy, heading down the path of authoritarian regimes. There is something deeply ironic and tragic about this situation. The lessons the United States used to teach the entire world, it seems to have forgotten itself.

When Silence Becomes Complicity

The Schedule Policy/Career rule takes effect this Friday, February 6, 2026. In a few hours, 50,000 U.S. civil servants will wake up to a different world, one where job security no longer exists and where their expertise counts for less than their political loyalty. This transformation will not stop there. If this rule stands—if the courts do not overturn it and Congress does not block it—it will serve as a model for going even further. Trump has already floated the idea of extending this system to hundreds of thousands of other positions. The dismantling of the U.S. civil service has only just begun. And in the meantime, most Americans go about their daily lives, unaware of the seismic shift that is brewing. Because that is the genius of this strategy: it advances in small steps, through technical changes that seem innocuous, until the day we wake up in a country we no longer recognize.

I don’t know how to stop this. I don’t know if it can still be stopped. But I know one thing: silence is no longer an option. Every time we let an attack on democratic institutions go unchallenged, we make the next one easier. Every time we normalize the abnormal, we push the red line a little further. And one day, we’ll find ourselves on the other side, in a place we never wanted to go. That day is approaching. Fast.

Signed, Jacques Provost