Monitoring democratic institutions through public records
Government Worker Protections — Week of Feb 23, 2026
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.
AI content assessment elevated; structural anomaly detected (descriptive only)
AI two-pass review flags anomalous content with P2 corroboration. Monitoring increased.
This week, the Office of Personnel Management proposed two new rules that would change how federal workers are evaluated. The most sweeping is Performance Appraisal for General Schedule, Prevailing Rate, and Certain Other Employees, which would allow agencies to use forced rating quotas — meaning a set percentage of workers could be labeled as low performers regardless of their actual work — while also removing workers' right to formally challenge their ratings and ending required reviews when someone receives the lowest possible score. A second rule, Managing Senior Professional Performance, applies similar changes to senior scientists and technical experts across the government.
This might matter because the civil service system is designed to protect government workers from being fired for political reasons rather than job performance. If managers can assign poor ratings through quotas and employees cannot challenge those ratings, it could create a pathway for removing workers based on factors other than merit — undermining protections that have been in place since 1978 to keep the federal workforce professional and nonpartisan.
There are reasonable alternative explanations. Most plausibly, performance management reform is something every recent administration has pursued, and there are legitimate concerns that current rules make it too difficult to address genuine underperformance. Additionally, these are proposed rules, not final ones — the public has until March 26, 2026, to submit comments, and the rules could be substantially revised before taking effect. However, critics will note that removing multiple safeguards at once — rating quotas, grievance rights, and mandatory review — goes further than typical reform efforts.
Limitations: This assessment covers a small number of documents (12 total) and is based on AI-assisted analysis of proposed rules that have not been finalized. Their real-world impact will depend on the comment process, potential legal challenges, and how agencies choose to implement them.