Project 2025 Seeks to Undermine Public Services with Schedule F

The American Postal Worker has reported on the conservative-created, Trump-supported Project 2025 in past issues. Please see the August- September 2024 and October- November 2024 issues for more background information.

Americans everywhere depend on efficient government services to support our communities, foster economic stability, and provide a social safety net for neighbors in need. Civil servants, at all levels of government, help make sure public services like Social Security payments, disaster relief, and public education are accessible to everyone who wants them. Keeping high quality public services available and open to the public also means keeping civil servants with expertise in these jobs.

Project 2025 seeks to undermine this expectation of efficiency and expertise in public services by dismantling the Federal Government and reinstating Trump’s 2020 “Schedule F” Executive Order. This would allow the ruling administration to reclassify many civil servants as policymaking or policy-evaluating workers, thereby removing their civil service protections and making them at-will employees. President Trump could then install whomever he pleases based on favoritism and loyalty to his administration.

Deploying Schedule F to replace dedicated civil servants with inexperienced cronies removes the very people who are experts at their jobs and have the knowledge to help our government serve our communities in the best possible way.

Installing employees based on “who you know” favoritism effectively removes the nonpartisan and professional nature of civil service – civil servants should simply be the most qualified for the job. That’s why tests like the ones postal workers must take for employment exist. An unbiased exam means that workers earn their jobs based on their skills, not who we know or what color our skin is.

Furthermore, in the long run, this practice could effectively dismantle public trust and efficiency in government services, letting billionaires like Donald Trump and Elon Musk make the case for a privatized, capitalistic government that profits off its citizens, instead of a government that exists to uplift workers and our communities.

Our union family at the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is preparing to fight back and protect their workers who are providing essential public services at the federal level. We must stand together as working people and fight back against attacks on the AFGE and our other union families, to protect knowledgeable, dedicated federal employees and great public services for everyone. ■