Russell Vought, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to direct the Office of Management and Budget, faced tense questioning from both Democrat and Republican senators during his confirmation hearing Wednesday.
When Vought previously served in the same office during the first Trump administration, he helped Trump design a new classification for federal employees—”Schedule F”—to reclassify tens of thousands as essentially at-will workers who were more accountable to a president and would be less likely to hinder him in carrying out his policies. Such employees could be fired more easily by the administration rather than being protected by the bureaucracy.
Biden eliminated this classification in the first days of his administration, and in April 2024, implemented a rule granting federal employees future protection from a future Trump administration’s revival of…
