Trump’s Plan to Reduce Federal Workforce Includes Culling Out ‘Disloyal’ Veterans

By JW August / Exclusive to the OB Rag

The Trump administration has rolled out a plan to begin further cuts in the federal workforce, a move that some sources say has a hidden agenda  — to remove employees who are seen as not loyal to the president.  We are told by a long time source that U.S.Veterans who voted Democratic or Independent will be on an administrative hit list as the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) just released “reductions in force ” (RIF) is rolled out.  (The source will be identified as ‘S’ or he/she through this story.)

The RIF is “the first major overhaul of the federal employee performance management system in decades,” according to government news platform, Government Executive.com. This follows the early 2025 effort by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to make massive cuts to the federal workforce. Chaos and confusion were byproducts of that effort.  Its value is still a matter of debate.  The American Federation of Government Employees said this current RIF is part of the Trump effort to “dismantle ,the non-partisan civil service.”

The OPM believes they can reshuffle the deck, do whatever is needed to cut the workforce.  They say, “The applicable statute (5 U.S.C. 3502) directs OPM to prescribe regulations ‘for the release of competing employees in a reduction in force’ that give ‘due effect’ to four factors: tenure of employment; military preference, length of service; and efficiency or performance ratings.”

The first RIF was enacted in 1876 by Congress, which required, “that veterans receive a preference over other employees when such reductions are taken”. Our sources say that is not going to happen this time around.

The RIF’s real intended use is to cull out  veterans and other employees who don’t support the president’s agenda, says ‘S’.  It’s revealed, says he/she,when you follow the administration’s progression up to this point as shown in two previous OB Rag stories. Our primary source for those stories was ‘S’  and they lay out the trajectory of the Trump administration’s efforts to remove disloyal employees in the federal workforce.

The source, who is a highly placed senior manager within the federal bureaucracy in Washington, first revealed the opening gambit in in the administration’s strategy in an OB Rag story reported on February 1st of last year about the effort at the “cleansing” of employees who did not support Trump.

In the August 6th issue of the OB Rag last year, the story centered on how the Department of Justice asked 15 states, including California, for voter election data for its investigations into voter fraud.  Just recently, the DOJ asked five more states for their election data as part of Trump’s continued efforts to uncover ‘voter fraud’ in the 2020 election.  His claims have been refuted repeatedly by courts as false. There is zero proof to Trump’s repeated allegations of voter fraud

He/she believes the logical conclusion to these efforts, as well as “S”s own sources, and chat room conversations from federal employees, is the voting data will be provided to all the federal agencies headed up by Trump loyalists.  It will be used to determine who stays and who goes, putting employees who did not vote for Trump in jeopardy during the RIF process.

For the U.S Veterans in the federal workforce this RIF has two whammy’s for those who served but didn’t vote for Trump.

Most importantly the credit they receive for their service to the country will carry less weight under this OMB plan. This additional credit was the purpose of the Veterans’ Preference Act, passed in 1944.  But loyalty to Trump will now become the most important consideration in “who keeps their job and who is fired,” says our source.

Currently, seniority counts the most in evaluating a federal employee; it is followed by a veteran’s service to the country.This is now going to be flipped, with an employee’s performance to be used as the most important factor in evaluating workers; this will result in removing the traditional safety net of seniority and service and replacing it with  a ‘performance-first’ model.

The administration says the rule will “make the RIF  regulations more streamlined, efficient, and merit-based by prioritizing performance over tenure and length of service…”  The source ‘S’ says it will be a way to rid federal agencies of veterans who don’t support the president, under the guise of efficiency.

“Performance-first’ as it is called, is a 1 to 5 point system, with five being the highest. Veterans will still qualify for additional points when determining their score.  But these points are determined by the agency where they are employed. The employee’s points for the first evaluation period will be added to the three most recent performance ratings.  If these ratings are lower than non-veteran peers, the veteran points may not be able to save their job.  The catch here, says ’S’, is that currently there is a ‘pass or no pass” system used to evaluate employees, which means the “three most recent performance ratings” have no numeric grade.

Federal employees in chat rooms are worried, complaining there are no details explaining if and how they get credit for prior years work. In addition, concerns their current supervisors will consider their time in the Biden administration as a waste and they will be graded as such.  There are numerous stories of the current administration and the president continually criticizing the work of the Biden years.  While this issue may eventually be addressed, our sources say, the results are going to be the same.

The new rules do assert they will maintain veteran preference for federal hiring because it’s a legal requirement. This preference  is the result of efforts by Congress to honor veterans for their sacrifices. It has a long history, going back to the Civil War as a way to help veterans find employment returning from service.  Unfortunately, now the principal determiner will be the performance level of employees in an agency.   The evaluation of the performance is in the hands of  the employee’s supervisor and/or the agency head.  The catch, says “S” is those assessing the grades are leaders of agencies run by Trump loyalists.  Voting records of their employees would likely make the job easier on deciding who keeps their job.

Also worrisome for those affected is found in a story on the Government Executive website from last December saying they acquired documents showing “federal supervisors would be permitted to set quotas on how employees are rated” but are limited to the number of employees “they can rate as above average in their annual performance reviews”.

That potentially means, our source says, that “they will be handing out a limited number of passing grades, which is a 4 or 5” on the ‘performance first’ scale.

Additionally, if you are a  veteran, a new hire on probation, you are not considered a “competing employee” under the proposed rules.  The veteran can be fired at the agency’s discretion without any RIF protections (reduction in force) or seniority consideration.

According to the OPM website, currently 27.9 percent of federal employees are military veterans, as of January of this year. The percentage equates to 567,000 veterans.