Career civil servants include professional staff across the government who stay on when the presidency changes hands.
Portraying federal employees as unaccountable bureaucrats, the Trump team has argued that removing job protections for those who have any influence over policymaking is justified because it is too difficult to fire them.
Critics saw the move as a throwback to the corrupt 19th-century patronage system, when all federal jobs were partisan spoils rather than based on merit.
Congress ended that system with a series of civil-service laws dating back to the Pendleton Act of 1883.
Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, described Schedule F as “the most profound undermining of the civil service in our lifetimes.”
Persons:
Trump, —, Critics, Everett Kelley
Organizations:
Trump, American Federation of Government Employees
Locations:
Pendleton