Ranking Member Connolly Opposes OPM’s Scheme to Purge and Politicize the Federal Workforce
Washington, D.C. (May 1, 2025)—Today, Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter to Charles Ezell, Acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), opposing OPM’s plan to strip civil servants of protections to escalate the Administration’s political purge of the civil service. The Administration is engaged in a rapid and sweeping effort to purge the federal workforce through mass terminations of new or recently transferred employees, scam resignation offers, efforts to replace career professionals with partisan loyalists, attempts to eliminate entire agencies, and general threats of mass firings based on arbitrary decrees from Elon Musk. The Administration’s concerted attacks on federal employees will politicize the delivery of life-saving services and grind the essential functions of our government to a halt. When that happens, it is going to be the American people who suffer most.
“I write in strong opposition to the recent Office of Personnel Management (OPM) proposed rule to purge and politicize the nonpartisan federal workforce by reclassifying more than 50,000 federal employees under Schedule Policy/Career. The Administration’s proposed rule has bipartisan opposition in Congress, because of the devastation it would inflict on the expertise and performance of our federal workforce, which would in turn hurt our constituents and the life-saving services they need and deserve,” wrote Ranking Member Connolly. “I strongly urge the Administration to rescind the proposed rule and cease its political assault on our federal workforce. Also, be forewarned: the Administration’s full-scale executive power grab through unlawful and other means, of which this rule is a part, is increasingly clear to the American people and risks an immense public backlash with serious political consequences for the Administration and Congressional Republicans.”
For decades, both Republican and Democratic administrations have relied on the institutional knowledge and expertise of impartial career federal employees to ensure constituents and communities get the services they need and deserve from government. Civil service protections allow the federal government to recruit and retain an expert federal workforce free from political pressures and threats, and the protections ensure experienced civil servants will not be replaced with inexperienced partisan loyalists.
OPM’s proposed rule to reclassify tens of thousands of career federal employees under a proposed Schedule Policy/Career would allow experienced civil servants to be terminated, not on merit, but for political reasons. This weakens the federal workforce, making it difficult to retain experienced staff and rewarding federal employees for political loyalty rather than their knowledge and experience.
“Nonpartisan civil servants, 30% of whom are veterans, help families in the wake of hurricanes and deadly fires, facilitate access to lifesaving payments like Social Security and unemployment insurance, and protect our national security. This rule would allow the Trump Administration to summarily terminate a veteran who devoted their post-service career to the federal government and replace them with a 20-something political operative whose primary qualification is unquestioned fealty to the MAGA movement. Reclassifying nonpartisan federal employees so they can be replaced with President Trump’s inexperienced loyalists will undermine public service and jeopardize the well-being and safety for all Americans,” concluded Ranking Member Connolly.
Ranking Member Connolly strongly urged OPM Acting Director Charles Ezell to stop his efforts to purge and politicize our federal workforce, and requested a briefing on OPM’s proposed rule on Schedule Policy/Career by May 15, 2025.
Click here to read the letter to OPM Acting Director Charles Ezell.
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