Before Trump left office in 2021, he passed an executive order known as the
⚠️“Schedule F” rule,
which would have
🔥reclassified huge swaths of career government employees and made it easier to fire them.
🔹Biden reversed that order when he entered the White House,
and his administration finalized rules through the Office of Personnel Management bolstering protections for career staffers.
🆘Trump has vowed to reinstate the Schedule F rule, however.
✅Even if he succeeds, legal experts said it could take years to implement the rule,
as the untested issue of firing masses of federal workers makes its way through the courts.
“The protections that Biden put in will help, but it will be a fight,” said Rushab Sanghvi,
acting general counsel of the American Federation of Government Employees,
which represents some Justice Department employees
— though not prosecutors.
“For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans,”
Trump wrote when announcing his new Attorney General pick,
longtime ally Pam Bondi,
in a post on Truth Social.
“Not anymore. #Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime, and Making America Safe Again.”
❇️ It’s not clear how quickly or easily Trump could fire career staff,
including the prosecutors who worked for Smith on the classified-documents and election-obstruction cases.
Appeals on several fronts delayed the cases from going to trial before the November election, and Justice Department policy prohibits prosecuting sitting presidents.
Smith is expected to submit court filings in both cases Dec. 2 explaining how he plans to wind them down.