🧨 Trump Admin’s New Hiring and Firing Rules Cross the Line, AFGE Says

A new federal hiring plan quietly released by Trump’s Office of Personnel Management is being called out as illegal and dangerous—both by public administration experts and AFGE.

At the center of the controversy is a new “merit hiring” rule that will:

• Require applicants for GS-5 or higher jobs to write an essay about how they’ll help implement Trump’s executive orders
• Allow political appointees to serve as hiring screeners and final decision-makers
• Pair with a fast-track firing rule that could allow workers to be terminated within five days of being labeled “unsuitable”

📣 AFGE National President Everett Kelley responded bluntly:

“The administration is attempting to stack federal agencies with subservient employees who will do the administration’s bidding regardless of the law.”

🧠 Scholar Don Moynihan also warned:

“The question acts as a loyalty test… This is how you build your own deep state.”

These moves are the hiring equivalent of Schedule F—remaking the civil service into a tool of political loyalty rather than professional merit. AFGE is calling it what it is: an illegal attack on a nonpartisan federal workforce.

📎 AFGE statement

📎 Analysis by Don Moynihan

The Politicization of Federal Hiring – by Don Moynihan

A new Trump policy undermines the goal of a nonpartisan public service

donmoynihan.substack.com