New US civil service rules look to prevent a future Trump purge of federal workers

The Biden administration has finalised a new set of regulations to prevent a future president from initiating a wholesale purge of the US civil service along the lines of what former president Donald Trump envisioned during the final months of his term.

The new rules, published in the Federal Register on Thursday and which would go into effect on 9 May, are meant to provide the 2.2 million nonpartisan civil servants who staff the executive branch with more defined protections that cannot be easily stripped away by presidential fiat.

They were inspired by an October 2020 executive order issued by Mr Trump which created a new category of federal employee known as “Schedule F” which encompassed anyone working in what the order described as  “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating positions” — a classification that had generally been reserved for the political appointees who come and go with each change in administration.

According to experts, this could have encompassed most of the non-partisan experts — scientists, doctors, lawyers, economists — who are supposed to advise and inform policymakers in a way that is fact-driven and devoid of politics. The order stripped most civil service protections from these employees, allowing them to be fired without cause.

Joe Biden rescinded Mr Trump’s order as one of his first official acts after taking office, and he has repeatedly called for Congress to enact stronger civil service protections into law to prevent future presidents from attempting what Mr Trump tried to do with Schedule F.

But Mr Trump, who is currently the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee in what is set to be a rematch of the 2020 presidential election against Mr Biden, has