Deep State? What Deep State?
/The new regulation — which will be published in the Federal Register for public inspection on Thursday — seeks to provide 2.2 million federal employees with defined protections that would make it difficult for a future administration to re-apply the Trump policy, known as Schedule F.
“We are confident that our final rule is the best reading of civil service statutes and is grounded in the civil service in the statutory language, congressional intent, legislative history and decades of applicable case law and practice,” said OPM Deputy Director Rob Shriver on a press call. “The rule is strong, it will help to ensure the rights employees earned as envisioned by Congress when it enacted the Civil Service Reform Act in 1978 and expanded and strengthened those protections through subsequent enactments.”
While Schedule F still exists, it is now virtually impossible to reclassify civil service employees involuntarily. In case of an attempt to reclassify an employee involuntarily, the rule creates an elaborate and time-consuming appeals process that can be used to delay the action until eternity.
Keeping in mind that this rule was one of the Biden OPM's top projects, it has taken over three years to jump through the hoops in the rule-making process to reach this point. It would take a Trump OPM at least as long to unwind it.