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Sources close to former President Trump say he would immediately reimpose his "Schedule F" executive order if he takes back the White House in the 2024 presidential elections, Axios' Jonathan Swan reports.
Why it matters: It would effectively upend the modern civil service, and put future presidents in the position of bringing in their own loyalists or reverting to a traditional bureaucracy, Swan reports.
Trump signed an executive order in October 2020 which established a new Schedule F employment category for federal employees.
Tens of thousands of civil servants who serve in roles deemed to have some influence over policy would be reassigned as "Schedule F" employees.
Those levels of influence included "confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating," the order says.
They would lose their employment protections upon re-assignment, making them functionally at-will employees and therefore far easier to fire, Gov Exec reports.
It could apply to as many as 50,000 federal workers out of a workforce of more than 2 million, Swan reports.
New presidents typically get to replace more than 4,000 so-called "political" appointees to oversee the running of their administrations.
But below this rotating layer of political appointees sits a mass of government workers who enjoy strong employment protections and typically continue their service from one administration to the next regardless of the president's party affiliation.
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