OPM required federal job applicants nationwide to write essays advancing Trump's policy priorities to be considered for hire

On May 29, 2025, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management issued a "Merit Hiring Plan" memo, jointly signed by White House Domestic Policy Council Director Vince Haley and then-Acting OPM Director Charles Ezell, adding a new essay requirement to the hiring process for any federal position at GS-5 or above. Applicants were instructed to "identify one or two relevant executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired" — in effect, a written essay endorsing the President's agenda as a prerequisite for being considered for a government job. Government Executive's original reporting found the political-essay requirement bundled inside a memo that also carried a set of bipartisan hiring-process reforms and a directive ending agency collection of workforce demographic data.

The essay question was applied without regard to the partisan character of the underlying job: per Reuters, it appeared on more than 70,000 federal job postings, for roles ranging from air traffic control specialists to crane operators to nuclear materials couriers. The Civil Service Reform Act bars federal employment decisions made on the basis of an applicant's political affiliation, a protection meant to keep career civil-service hiring insulated from tests of partisan loyalty. This entry is distinct from the administration's separate Schedule Policy/Career reclassification of existing career employees: that action strips job protections from sitting staff, while the Merit Hiring Plan screens new applicants before they are ever hired.

Updates

2026-04-27 — Unions' court filing rebutted OPM's claim that the essay question was optional [4]

In a filing in the AFGE-led suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, union attorneys documented that job postings marked the essay question as a required field with red asterisks blocking submission without an answer, contradicting OPM's public position that answering was voluntary. An OPM official acknowledged on the record that some agencies had manually configured the question as mandatory, contrary to OPM's own default guidance: "If agencies are choosing to require the questions, contrary to OPM guidance, that's not our decision."

2026-09-11 — Federal judge preliminarily blocked OPM from using the essay question [2, 3]

U.S. District Judge George O'Toole of the District of Massachusetts, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, preliminarily enjoined OPM from continuing to require the essay, in a suit brought by the American Federation of Government Employees, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and the National Association of Government Employees. He found the unions likely to succeed in showing no legitimate government interest in probing applicants' political beliefs under the Civil Service Reform Act, and that the question likely violated the Administrative Procedure Act by infringing First Amendment speech rights.