Monitoring democratic institutions through public records
Government Worker Protections — Week of Sep 15, 2025
Are career government workers protected from being fired for political reasons? 'Schedule F' is a rule that could let the President fire thousands of workers who aren't loyal to him.
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This week, two government actions raised questions about protections for career federal workers. The Office of Personnel Management finalized a rule — Assuring Responsive and Accountable Federal Executive Management — that removes a ban on forcing agencies to limit how many senior executives can receive top performance ratings. Separately, Rep. John Larson delivered a floor speech alleging that unvetted DOGE personnel accessed personal Social Security records while the agency's own career staff were being laid off.
These developments might matter because they could affect the merit-based civil service system — the set of rules designed to ensure that career government workers are hired, rated, and fired based on their performance rather than their political loyalty. The new OPM rule addresses a real problem: 96% of senior executives received top ratings in 2023, which undermines the credibility of the rating system. However, allowing agencies to cap top ratings means some high-performing officials could be forced into lower ratings simply to meet a quota, potentially making it easier to push out career leaders for reasons unrelated to their actual work.
There are reasonable alternative explanations. The performance rating reform may simply be a long-overdue fix to a broken system — most organizations don't rate 96% of leaders as outstanding. The rule removes a prohibition rather than mandating quotas, so agencies may use this authority responsibly. Rep. Larson's claims about DOGE are made in a partisan context and haven't been independently verified in available documents; DOGE personnel may have undergone vetting processes not described in the speech.
Still, the combination of loosening rating protections for senior officials and reports of external actors operating inside agencies without standard oversight represents a pattern worth watching.
Limitations: This analysis is based on a very small number of documents. The OPM rule's real-world impact will depend on how agencies choose to use it, and the claims about DOGE access to Social Security data come from a single congressional speech, not verified reporting.