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Democratic lawmakers condemn looming reclassification of career civil servants

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3 months ago

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Democratic members of Congress are calling on the Office of Personnel Management to abandon its planned revival of Schedule F, which may be just weeks away from reality for career federal employees in policy roles.

In a letter sent to OPM this week, a bicameral group of 27 Democrats said they believe OPM’s recent proposed regulations to bring back the Schedule F employment classification — now called “Schedule Policy/Career” — will upend decades of positive civil service reforms.

“The proposed rule will allow agencies to reclassify thousands of dedicated federal workers from the competitive service into the excepted service and therefore strip them of their civil service rights and protections,” Democrats wrote in the letter, addressed to OPM Acting Director Charles Ezell. “Rescheduling nonpartisan positions undermines the ability of federal agencies to fulfill their vital missions and ignores over 140 years of civil service precedent.”

The letter comes as OPM’s proposed regulations remain open to public comments for about another week, with the comment period scheduled to end May 23. At the time of publication, the proposed regulations had nearly 10,000 public comments — far exceeding the average of about 22 comments per proposed federal rule within the last year. Once the comment period closes, OPM plans to finalize the regulations and President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order to push agencies forward in converting employees to Schedule Policy/Career.

The Trump administration’s move to reinstitute Schedule F policies center on reclassifying some career federal personnel to essentially “at-will” employees — making them easier to fire than current merit-system principles allow. OPM estimated that roughly 50,000 career federal employees would be reclassified. However, other estimates have shown the new employment classification could impact upwards of 200,000 personnel.

“OPM’s failure to adequately define what factors constitute ‘confidential, policy-determining, policymaking or policy-advocating character’ leaves interpretation largely up to each agency and risks the policy being much more broadly implemented than initially disclosed,” the Democrats wrote in their letter. “Already, agencies have begun taking the broadest approach to evaluating which positions to reclassify into Schedule Policy/Career.”

OPM did not immediately respond to Federal News Network’s request for comment on the letter from Democrats. But in its justification of the proposed regulations to revive Schedule F, OPM wrote that reclassifying career employees would “strengthen employee accountability and the democratic responsiveness of American government, while addressing longstanding performance management challenges in the federal workforce.”

In opposition to OPM’s proposal, the Democrats also touted their recently reintroduced bill, called the Saving the Civil Service Act. If enacted, the legislation would enshrine federal workforce protections and prevent any policy similar to Schedule F from resurfacing. In practice, the bill would ban agencies from reclassifying career federal employees without congressional approval.

Proposed cuts to federal benefits

At the same time, House Democrats on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee have been calling attention to Republicans’ proposed cuts to federal benefits, which are slated for potential inclusion in the GOP’s upcoming budget reconciliation bill.

On Wednesday, committee Democrats held a roundtable with federal unions and employee organizations on the series of proposed changes to federal benefits and retirement. The Oversight committee recently advanced six proposals, mostly along party lines, to be considered for inclusion in the reconciliation package.

Democratic lawmakers hold a roundtable with leaders of federal unions and employee organizations on the proposed series of cuts to federal benefits. (Source: Oversight Committee Democrats)

“Unfortunately, the Republicans’ reconciliation print is an effective green light for the administration to continue to attack the federal workforce,” Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Ma.), a member of the Oversight committee, said Wednesday. “It will reduce the pay of federal workers; it will break promises on entitled retirement benefits; it will deter current and federal employees from seeking justice against wrongful employment actions; and it will provide a back-door Schedule P/C, formerly known as Schedule F, to purge the federal workforce in Trump’s favor.”

Committee Republicans, however, said the proposals would put federal retirement and benefits more on par with the private sector, while also saving an estimated $50 billion over 10 years. In support of committee Republicans’ efforts, the National Taxpayers Union said the Oversight proposals “revise federal employee benefits to levels more commonly found in the private sector.”

The Foundation for Government Accountability, another supporter of the federal benefits cuts, also issued a statement on the potential changes. “It’s time the federal workforce played by the same rules and delivered the same results expected in any real-world job. The reconciliation bill presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to bring the federal workforce to heel and rein in the unchecked power of unions.”

The proposals, if included in the final legislation, would charge feds a fee to file a claim with the Merit Systems Protection Board, eliminate the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) annuity supplement and move retirement calculations from a “high-3” to a “high-5,” among several other changes cutting federal benefits.

Many federal unions and organizations harshly criticized the GOP proposals, saying they would create a chilling effect on federal recruitment and retention, in addition to hurting employees close to retirement.

“Our members have spent 25 to 30 years building a stable future based on longstanding agreements with the government, and now they’re questioning whether they can afford to retire. One manager described it as ‘changing the terms of the mortgage the day before closing,’” Kelly Reyes, executive director of the Professional Managers Association, said in a statement following the roundtable this week.

“Federal employees are not the cause of the government’s debt nor deficit,” said Marcus Hill, president of the Senior Executives Association. “It is short-sighted to impose pay cuts that will only make the government less competitive and attractive as an employer for the talent needed to serve America, now and into the future.”

The post Democratic lawmakers condemn looming reclassification of career civil servants first appeared on Federal News Network.

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Musk Has Gone Quiet About the Launch of His ‘America Party’ — Here’s What We Know

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15 hours ago

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August 13, 2025

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Maybe Elon Musk is more interested in planets than politics.

The mega-billionaire founder of Tesla, owner of X, and the genius behind the pioneering company SpaceX caused a huge stir in early July when he announced the birth of a new third party on the American political scene.

The question now is, whatever became of that?

Musk first broached the subject in a July 4 post on X when he launched a poll to find out what his followers thought. The results weren’t even close.

“By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it!” Musk wrote in a July 5 post.

“Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”

Naturally, the post caused a splash.

Elon Musk is one of the few names in politics that can even come close to competing with the star power of President Donald Trump. So the idea that he could be mounting an actual challenge to Trump’s Republican Party would have been news indeed.

But as The Daily Caller White House correspondent Reagan Reese wrote in an article published Monday, there appears to be nothing in the way of follow-through coming yet.

“Musk hasn’t even mentioned the effort in over a month, and insiders told the Daily Caller that it seems Musk has begun to realize just how difficult what he pledged to do would be,” Reese wrote.

At the time of Musk’s announcement, Trump branded the idea of a third party “ridiculous.”

Musk, of course, has other things on his plate besides politics.

As USA Today reported last week, Musk’s SpaceX could be nearing a new test flight for its Starship rocket, a 400-foot spacecraft the newspaper called “crucial” to future space ambitions, for Musk and the country as a whole.

Musk is a very public booster of manned trips to Mars — extraterrestrial exploration is vital “for the long-term survival of civilization,” he said, USA Today reported.

Humanity is essentially faced with the prospect of branching out or dying out.

One path means “we stay on Earth forever and then there will be some sort of eventual extinction event,” he wrote in a 2017 paper published by the journal New Space.

According to the electronics news-centric website CNET, Musk told the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, in 2013 that he wants to die on Mars — “just not on impact.”

There are also very earthly concerns for Musk to consider about starting a party that would compete almost exclusively with Republicans for support.

(Besides Musk’s famously libertarian inclinations — free speech, gun rights, etc. — his popularity among liberals is so low it can be measured in the number of Tesla vehicles damaged and dealerships attacked by leftists.)

According to Reese’s report, a former Department of Government Efficiency consultant who launched a political action committee specifically to counter the threat of a Musk third party said Musk has realized that helping Democrats might not be so helpful to his own interests.

“Make no mistake, there is a real threat to both Elon and to his businesses if the Democrats were to regain control,” James Fishback, CEO of the Arizona investment firm Azoria, told Reese.

“That’s a message that I shared privately with Tesla executives, and that may have been part of the reason why he attenuated his positioning on that.”

Musk can be unpredictable, of course. He’s a generational genius, and geniuses make their own decisions and forge their own paths.

But for now, at least, it appears his third party is going to stay in the background of the political stage.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

The post Musk Has Gone Quiet About the Launch of His ‘America Party’ — Here’s What We Know appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Chinese Ships Collide: Karmic Payback for Years of Bullying the Philippine Coast Guard

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16 hours ago

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August 13, 2025

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RudolphChen, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

On an ongoing basis, the Chinese Coast Guard has harassed and intimidated Philippine Coast Guard and fishing vessels in the South China Sea. China claims almost the entire sea, while the Permanent Court of Arbitration has rejected China’s claims. As the Philippine ships and vessels continues to use territory which the world recognizes as belonging to the Philippines, China has historically used bully tactics, blocking, ramming, and damaging Philippine vessels or shooting them with high powered water cannons. This week, China was dished some karmic justice when two of its bully ships collided, rendering one of them on seaworthy.

This increased aggression by China is one of the primary reasons why the US Navy conducts freedom of navigation patrols in the region.

On Monday, August 11, 2025, two Chinese vessels collided while pursuing Philippine Coast Guard ships near Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. The Chinese Coast Guard cutter CCG 3104 struck the PLA Navy guided-missile destroyer Guilin (hull number 164) a botched blockade attempt.

The clash occurred as Philippine Coast Guard vessels BRP Teresa Magbanua and BRP Suluan escorted the fishing vessel MV Pamamalakaya and 35 local fishing boats as part of Manila’s Kadiwa Operation, which delivers fuel and supplies to Filipino fishermen operating in the country’s western exclusive economic zone.

Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said CCG 3104, while chasing the BRP Suluan at high speed, attempted a risky maneuver from the vessel’s starboard quarter. The cutter’s movement caused it to ram into the Guilin, which was approaching from the other side. Analysts believe the Chinese ships were trying to “sandwich” the Philippine cutter, forcing it into the path of a close-range water cannon blast. Poor coordination turned the maneuver into a self-inflicted collision.

The impact left CCG 3104 “unseaworthy,” with significant damage to its bow and forecastle. The Chinese crew did not respond to the Philippine ship’s offer of assistance, and it remains unclear if there were any injuries.

The involvement of the Chinese Navy destroyer Guilin in the Scarborough Shoal collision was considered highly unusual and “overkill” by analysts. PLA Navy warships typically remain “over the horizon” and avoid direct engagement, leaving such confrontations to the Chinese Coast Guard. This made the August 11 incident one of the most severe encounters between Chinese forces and the Philippines, highlighting the escalating tensions in the South China Sea.

Scarborough Shoal has been a persistent flashpoint since China seized it from the Philippines in 2012. Since then, Beijing has waged a steady campaign of harassment against Philippine civilian and government vessels, which has intensified in recent years. In February 2023, a Chinese Coast Guard vessel used a military-grade laser against a 44-meter Philippine Coast Guard ship during a resupply mission.

In March 2024, Chinese ships deployed water cannons on Philippine vessels, shattering a windshield and injuring crew members. The following month, three Chinese cutters rammed and blasted Philippine patrol boats with water cannons near Scarborough Shoal, while others threatened Filipino fishermen at Iroquois Reef. In January 2025, multiple Chinese vessels made aggressive maneuvers toward Philippine fisheries boats, forcing the suspension of a scientific survey.

Beijing justifies these actions through its “nine-dash line” claim, which asserts Chinese historical rights over roughly 90 percent of the South China Sea. The claim is based on a 1947 map created by the Nationalist government and later adopted by the Communist regime, citing historical records dating back to the Han Dynasty. Despite a 2016 international arbitration ruling rejecting the nine-dash line as having “no legal basis,” China has ignored the decision and continued to enforce its claims.

By enforcing the nine-dash line, Beijing seeks to transform these international waters into de facto sovereign territory in a process experts call “maritime territorialisation.”

Strategically, the South China Sea is a vital artery for global trade, with $3.36 trillion worth of goods passing through annually, including 80 percent of China’s energy imports. The waters are also rich in fishing grounds and contain large reserves of oil and natural gas.

Ironically, China is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), while the United States is not. Yet it is the U.S. that serves as the principal enforcer of the law, and China that stands as its principal violator.

The post Chinese Ships Collide: Karmic Payback for Years of Bullying the Philippine Coast Guard appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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$50 Million Bounty on Nicolás Maduro: A New Chapter in Counter-Terror Strategy.

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16 hours ago

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August 13, 2025

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This is a Gateway Hispanic article.

The post $50 Million Bounty on Nicolás Maduro: A New Chapter in Counter-Terror Strategy. appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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