The Biden administration has also finalized legal protections for scientists and other federal workers who are hired competitively into the civil service, as opposed to high-level officials who are appointed by the president. The move comes in direct response to an executive order issued at the end of Trump’s previous tenure in the White House that would have made it easier to reclassify the jobs of tens of thousands of career professionals, including scientists — and then to fire them.
In April, the Biden administration finalized a rule designed to prevent exactly that by limiting which federal workers can be reclassified under a provision known as schedule F. That would make it harder to reorganize the civil service, says Emerson, but there would be nothing to stop a second Trump administration reversing course with a new rule.
The end result would be a system in which people are appointed to influential positions because of their allegiance to a particular political belief of party, “and that just breeds corruption”, says Tim Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an advocacy group in Silver Spring, Maryland.