Trump signed EO 14284 requiring political appointees to certify retention of all probationary federal employees

On April 24, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14284, "Strengthening Probationary Periods in the Federal Service," establishing a new Civil Service Rule XI applicable to all probationary and trial-period employees in the competitive and excepted service. The order requires that agency heads — political appointees — affirmatively certify that a probationary employee's continued employment would benefit the federal service before that employee can receive career tenure. In the absence of such certification, employment automatically terminates at the end of the probationary or trial period.

Under the system Congress established in the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, new career employees who completed their probationary period without adverse action automatically received career tenure under merit principles, with retention overseen by career supervisors rather than political layers. EO 14284 repudiates that structure: it repeals the prior Civil Service Rule 2.4 and supersedes OPM regulations at 5 C.F.R. Part 315, Subpart H, substituting a new default of automatic termination unless a political appointee affirmatively acts. The order also added "needs and interests of the agency" as a freestanding basis for termination alongside performance and conduct — introducing discretionary ideological criteria into what had been a merit-based retention framework.

OPM published a final implementing rule effective June 24, 2025. The order was challenged in litigation; critics argued it converts all incoming career civil service employees into an at-will workforce subject to political screening, undoing merit system protections governing career hiring since 1978. The event is distinct from the concurrent mass probationary firings of early 2025 (an operational action under separate authority) and from the Schedule F and Schedule Policy-Career orders (which targeted senior career employees in policy-adjacent positions); EO 14284 applies to all new hires across all agencies and service categories.