Office of Personnel Management
agency
The Office of Personnel Management is the federal agency that manages the civilian workforce of the United States government, overseeing hiring, pay, benefits, and retirement systems for federal employees. It administers personnel policy across the executive branch and serves as the human resources department for the federal government. In 2025, OPM became central to the administration's effort to reduce the federal workforce through mass resignations, terminations, and reclassification of career employees as political appointees.
Entries involving this actor (3)
2026
OPM proposes government-wide NDA for federal workers, with civil and criminal penalties for press disclosures
On May 26, 2026, the Office of Personnel Management posted a Federal Register notice proposing a draft non-disclosure agreement for use by all federal agencies with both new and existing employees. The draft exposes signatories to civil and criminal penalties — and entitles the government to any royalties they receive — for disclosing information the administration deems "confidential" to the press, and requires former employees to obtain written permission from an authorized agency official before speaking to journalists about such material. OPM frames the NDA as preserving whistleblower channels through inspectors general and Congress, but the named target of the proposal is press disclosure of non-public information.
2025
Trump signed EO 14317 creating unlimited Schedule G political appointee class, bypassing Senate confirmation and SES caps
President Trump signed Executive Order 14317 on July 17, 2025, creating Schedule G in the Excepted Service — a new, numerically unlimited class of non-career political appointees who fill "policy-making or policy-advocating" roles without Senate confirmation. Unlike the Senior Executive Service, whose political appointments are capped at 10 percent by statute, Schedule G positions do not count against that limit, allowing the administration to install an unrestricted number of Trump loyalists in senior agency positions. The White House described the order as providing "horsepower for agency implementation of administration policy" and as a tool to "dismantle the deep state."
OPM demanded weekly work reports from 2 million federal employees under DOGE direction; Musk threatened mass resignation for non-response
On February 22, 2025, the Office of Personnel Management sent a government-wide email to approximately 2 million federal employees directing them to submit five bullets summarizing their weekly work accomplishments and copy their managers, with a deadline of the following Monday at 11:59 PM ET. The email was sent at the direction of Elon Musk, a White House special government employee leading DOGE, who simultaneously posted on X that failure to respond would be taken as a resignation. OPM's own February 5 privacy impact assessment, published in response to ongoing litigation, had explicitly stated seven times that responses to government-wide emails are voluntary.