my name is Ralph Smith i've been working
uh writing a number of articles for
FitSmith over the last number of years
and I've had several decades of working
in and around the federal government as
an employee and as a government
contractor for several
decades so one of the first things I
learned when I started working for the
government which was part of the
Treasury Department at the time I'd
passed the entrance exam i'd gone
through all the steps necessary to get a
job and I wanted to do a good job so
when I started there I quickly decided I
need to find out what's going on in this
vast bureaucracy that frankly was kind
of overwhelming all the rules and
regulations and trying to decide how to
do a good job so I found a couple of
people around who had 20 30 35 years of
experience and I asked them "What do I
do we've got a new president now and
he's making changes and that's fine i
didn't even know the existing system but
what do we do how do we implement these
changes and basically I was told by one
of them look I've been around this
agency for 30ome years and presidents
come and presidents go we're responsible
for making sure our programs for which
we have responsibility are implemented
successfully so I was writing it before
this president came in he'll be gone and
I'll be running this same program after
he leaves
and if we run it and we do a good job it
runs well the politicians take the
credit for it if it doesn't run well
they'll assign the blame to us that's
how it works so don't worry about it
don't make the changes that they're
talking about they're not that relevant
anyway and we'll go from there now why
is that important well that was a long
time ago but apparently according to
several people within the first Trump
administration the same type of attitude
exists president Trump refers it to
draining the swamp he wants to change
that system and the way he tried to do
it in his first term was what he calls
schedule F and essentially what schedule
F would have done had it gone into
effect which it never did before he left
office it would have changed career
employees in some positions into at
willill employees meaning they'd be
moved into a different career category
schedule F and that if they weren't
working to help the administration
accomplish its goals they could be fired
and in order to make this happen quickly
they would be taken away from the
protections that civil service employees
have well President Trump is now in his
second term and in the first day in
office he issued an executive
order addressing the same topic and he
called it ensuring
accountability so he issued the
executive order opm issued guidance to
agencies and agencies were given 90 days
to come up with a list of employees that
fell into this new category of employees
they would still be career employees but
they would be considered policy career
classification employees meaning they'd
be put into a different
classification and if they weren't doing
the job that the supervisor anybody in
the agency in a powerful position
thought wasn't that person wasn't
helping them implement the
administration's objectives they could
be removed easily quickly it's hard to
fire a federal employee in the sense
that they have a lot of appeal rights by
the time the appeals are exhausted
sometimes it usually takes several years
for an employee to be fired the
administration under Trump doesn't want
to do that they want to make it quicker
easier faster so that's what the purpose
is of what used to be called schedule F
now it's simply called policy and career
classification it's moving on this last
week on Friday evening actually uh
President Trump issued a fact sheet and
in his fact sheet he referenced that OPM
would be issuing a proposed rule and the
purpose of the proposed rule is moving
ahead to create this new category of
federal employees the 90 days federal
agencies were given to identify which
employees would be put into this new
category is just about up so presumably
OPM has an idea about how many employees
would be affected and moved into this
new category opm estimates around 50,000
people now when this was done back in
2020 some people estimated as many as
200,000 people would eventually be
impacted and put into an at will type of
job we don't really know how many people
will be impacted but it is moving
forward so we'll find out opm has issued
a proposed rule or is about to issue a
proposed rule that would actually go
ahead and move forward on creating this
category of employees and agencies would
after it becomes effective start moving
employees into this new category so
here's what's going on president Trump
calls it draining the swamp and the the
reasons he gives for creating this new
category are some of the following he
said that the OPM rule when it's issued
would empower federal agencies to
swiftly swiftly remove employees in
policy
influencing roles and the kinds of
reasons that they would be removed would
include poor performance misconduct
corruption or sub subversion of
presidential directives without having
to go through the lengthy procedural
hurdles that they would now have to go
through assuming they maintain the same
appeal rights that they continued to
have and he cited several reasons for
this and it relates back to what I
mentioned at first uh James Shurik who's
a person who was helping the
administration in the first term and
apparently has some similar type of
power in the second term wrote an
article that outlined what kinds of
problems he ran into in trying to
implement objectives of the
administration and most of it was not
any direct refusal it was simply people
saying "Well yeah we will do that we're
glad you told us that's what we're
supposed to do and we'll get right on it
he'd call back a week two weeks a month
later and they'd say "Yeah a lot of
stuff's come up we've been swamped we
haven't gotten to it but we'll get right
on it." In other words they wouldn't
implement the objectives that the
administration was seeking they didn't
really refuse they just never got it
done and I to be fair he also said that
most people he dealt with were easy to
work with they did what he asked them to
do they'd discuss it they'd go ahead and
implement it but not everybody and it's
the not everybody that they were trying
to get rid of and put somebody else in
their position that would help the
administration implement their
objectives in effect President Trump in
his fact sheet said agencies don't hold
employees accountable they want to
change that removing federal employees
is lengthy and difficult they want to
get rid of that lengthy process make it
quick and easy bureaucrats use
protections a system gives them to
oppose presidential policies and oppose
their own preferences in effect this is
what he's calling the deep state federal
employees with a lot of protection a lot
of appeal rights can't be fired at least
not quickly and easily so they remain on
the job for decades imposing their own
preferences establishing policies they
prefer and ignoring what the
administration wants them to do he says
in effect in his fact sheet
unaccountable bureaucracy undermines
bure democracy and he wants to create a
more democratic government by opposing
or getting rid of people who are
opposing the administration putting into
place its objectives now what would the
impact be on federal employees if this
goes through first out at willill
employment meaning you can be fired
quickly and easily secondly the scope of
positions it targets career employees in
policy influencing roles not political
employees career employees there's a
distinction and by saying it's people
who make policy it's not just those who
sign the piece of paper that may be a
political appointee they refer to it as
a person who influences policy
recommends policy publicizes policy
anybody in a role that determines what
that policy may ultimately be would be
subject to be put into this new category
of federal employees nonpartisan hiring
appointments to these positions should
remain nonpartisan and based on merit
not political affiliation he's saying in
effect we're not hiring just Republicans
we're not hiring just Democrats we want
people who will work with the
administration whoever is in power to
put it these goals into place and
finally no chapter 43 or 75 protections
employees who are put into schedule
policy career lose their coverage under
chapter 43 that is for performance or
chapter 75 adverse actions for
misconduct or other types of violations
the impact is they will not be able to
appeal a removal to the merit assistance
protection board now several things go
into the determination as to what's in
this final rule that OPM is going to be
proposing probably in the next week
there's a 30-day at least a 30-day
period for people to comment public can
comment unions will certainly comment
some federal employees may comment uh
members of the press may comment etc we
don't know what these comments will be
we don't know if it'll have any impact
on the final rule but we do know based
on past experience there are probably
going to be quite a few comments now OPM
may ignore them they may implement some
of them they may change the proposed
rules we'll have to see secondly uh
several lawsuits have been filed
involving this particular topic in
effect the unions are arguing it
violates due process it's
unconstitutional etc we don't know what
the courts will do chances are this is
going to end up going to the Supreme
Court as a number of other cases are
going to be going also one other thing
that's going on right now there's a
strong feeling that the Supreme Court is
about to issue a decision that would
hamper the ability of district court
judges to issue decisions that have a
nationwide impact the administration is
arguing you have district court judges
and there's about 690 of them issuing
decisions that determine or they would
like to determine the foreign policy of
the United States they would like to
determine how the executive branch is
run etc and the administration is
arguing to the Supreme Court in several
different cases that that's not how the
constitution intends the system to work
the president as the chief executive
should have the power to run the
executive branch so various cases
including removal of the chairman of
MSPV uh the special counsel for the
office of special counsel those kind the
national labor relations board uh has
been involved in some of these cases
these cases are all percolating they're
all going to the Supreme Court and we
don't know what'll happen what decision
the Supreme Court will issue we'll see
as this progresses we'll certainly do
other videos uh we wrote an article and
published yesterday on this latest fact
sheet and the new OPM proposed
regulation take a look at the article uh
please pay attention to what's going on
some of you perhaps 50,000 maybe 200,000
of you will be affected by this new
policy at as it goes into effect thanks
for watching if you enjoy it if you find
it useful consider subscribing to the
newsletter that we have at
fedsmith.com or the YouTube channel
where we provide these videos for our
readers and and viewers thank you very
much