President Donald Trump’s administration is moving to reclassify federal workers at two agencies in order to more easily fire them, Reuters reported Thursday.
The efforts are reportedly taking place at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Department of Energy (DOE). Trump had announced plans during his earliest days in office to recategorize tens of thousands of federal workers, arguing many of them oppose his policies.
‘I understand that there is a lot of concern and uncertainty about Schedule Policy/Career and want to provide the best information currently available,’ acting assistant administrator Emily Menashes wrote in an email to affected employees at the NOAA on Tuesday.
Most federal workers have protections requiring that they only be fired for cause. Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office creating a new classification of worker that can be fired at will, however.
In their new category, NOAA employees would remain career staff, not political appointees, but would be expected to support the administration’s agenda, an email to some NOAA staff said.
The DOE and the White House did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. The NOAA declined to comment.
The reported effort comes as Trump has already sought to fire tens of thousands of federal workers, many of whom have sued to keep their jobs.
At least one federal judge has ordered Trump’s administration to reinstate federal probationary workers that were fired in recent mass layoffs.
U.S. District Court Judge James Bredar issued an order on Tuesday directing 18 federal agencies to ‘undo’ the ‘purported terminations’ of thousands of probationary federal workers before Tuesday, April 8, though the order only applies to states whose attorneys general brought the case.
The states impacted by Wednesday’s ruling include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia.
Since Trump entered office, he has faced a slew of nationwide injunctions to halt actions of his administration. So far in his new term, the courts have hit him with roughly 15 wide-ranging orders, more than former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden received during their entire tenures.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich condemned the wave of injunctions as a ‘judicial coup d’etat’ during testimony before a House Judiciary subcommittee on Tuesday.
The former lawmaker highlighted that the vast majority of judges filing injunctions or restraining orders against Trump’s executive actions have been appointed by Democrats.
Reuters contributed to this report.
