Trump’s new civil service hiring plan: Merit or Meritless?

Raymond Limon Government Executive June 9, 2025

On May 29, 2025, the White House and Office of Personnel Management jointly released a 30-page Merit Hiring Plan that mandates new requirements and procedures for executive branch hiring. As a former Chief Human Capital Officer, OPM attorney and Merit Systems Protection Board vice chairman, I believe this new plan is filled with so many questionable legal and policy flaws that these new requirements make the Project 2025 proposed Schedule F regulation look quaint in comparison.

Why roll this out now? In the first several months of this administration, we witnessed a broad range of illegal and inhumane firings of thousands of civil servants, along with the removals of independent agency heads, board members, commissioners and inspectors general. This was more than just to rid the incoming administration from these “meddlesome” public servants. It was a path to create new vacancies and to install presidential loyalists. We are moving from “you’re fired” to “you’re hired.”