The new rule, which bolsters job protections for career civil servants, was issued on April 4 by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which hinted in a statement that it's targeting a promised move by a potential second Trump presidency to "drain the swamp and root out the deep state" by making it easier to fire government workers.

"In the first week of the Biden-Harris Administration, President Biden revoked an Executive Order issued by the previous Administration that risked altering our country's long-standing merit-based civil service system, by creating new excepted service schedule, known as 'Schedule F,' and directing agencies to move potentially large swathes of career employees into this new excepted service status," OPM said in the statement.

This is in reference to a Trump-era executive order issued in 2020 that allowed tens of thousands of the 2.2 million federal employees to be reclassified as political appointees, making it easier to fire them.

'Root Out the Deep State'

Roughly 4,000 federal employees are now considered political appointees, who typically change with each administration, with the revival of a Schedule F potentially increasing that more than tenfold.

President Joe Biden nixed the Schedule F order when he took office, while President Trump said in mid-2022 that he would try to revive the concept in one form or another.

"We need to make it much easier to fire rogue bureaucrats who are deliberately undermining democracy or at a minimum just want to keep their jobs," President Trump said in a speech at the America First Policy Institute on July 26, 2022, promising to "drain the swamp and root out the deep state."

The former president went further in his speech, calling on Congress to pass laws that would give the commander-in-chief the authority to fire any government employee basically at will.