Rebuilding the State Faster Than the Courts Can Stop It

In September 2025, a federal judge found that President Trump had likely violated the Inspector General Act when he fired seventeen agency watchdogs without the required thirty-day notice. Then Judge Ana Reyes declined to reinstate them. Her reasoning was blunt. ^[1]

Under well-established case law that this Court is bound to follow, Plaintiffs must show irreparable harm. And they cannot. — Ana Reyes-Menendez

The president could fire them again after providing the proper notice, and the court would be back where it started. A finding of illegality produced only a procedural remedy. The structural fact — the inspectors general were gone — remained. That single ruling captures the asymmetry now reshaping the federal government: the administration reclassifies the architecture of the state, the courts litigate the individual, and the reclassification moves faster. The reclassification began in earnest on June 3, 2026, when the Office of Personnel Management created a new employment category called Schedule Policy/Career. The rule converted roughly 8,000 senior federal employees to at-will status. OPM estimated that up to 50,000 positions could eventually fall under it. OPM Director Scott Kupor described the change as a mechanism for removing employees whose personal views made them obstacles to presidential priorities. ^[2]

You can have any political views, but if you allow those views to basically interfere with your willingness to actually carry out lawful orders and policy directives with the administration, then this provides a mechanism obviously for people in those agencies to be able to be removed effectively at will — Scott Kupor

At-will employment removes the job security that historically enabled bureaucratic resistance. Dissent is precluded by the threat of immediate termination, not punished after the fact. The reclassification is not a purge of individuals. It is a change to the employment architecture itself. The same logic is unfolding across the government's operational machinery. A Trump-appointed review council proposed transferring the National Flood Insurance Program's policies to the private market and shifting disaster recovery to states through lump-sum payments. FEMA had already lost more than 5,000 employees, and Secretary Kristi Noem required her personal sign-off on every grant and contract over $100,000, concentrating political control over decisions that career staff once handled. ^[3] At the Office of Management and Budget, Director Russell Vought proposed giving political appointees discretion to award and terminate hundreds of billions of dollars in federal research grants, replacing peer-review merit with alignment to "Executive Orders and agency priorities." Twenty-two state attorneys general are suing to block the rule, which is not yet final. ^[4] The administration is also lowering the professional standards required to enter federal service. The Department of Justice suspended the one-year legal experience requirement for prosecutors, began hiring directly from law school, and recruited via social media for lawyers "aligned with the administration's goals." The FBI under Director Kash Patel shortened agent training to nine weeks, waived interviews for support-staff-to-agent transfers, and promoted less-experienced agents to leadership positions. ^[5] These are not firings. They are architectural changes to how the state is staffed and operated. The units that might provide independent oversight have been eliminated or neutralized: the DOJ's Public Integrity Section was cut from thirty-six members to two, CISA election security specialists were fired, and the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force was disbanded. ^[6] The courts have not been idle. But the remedies they can offer are procedural, not structural. In February 2026, the Ninth Circuit upheld Trump's executive order stripping collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of federal workers at the Departments of Justice, State, Defense, Treasury, and Health and Human Services, finding the national security exemption legitimate. The Fourth Circuit dismissed nineteen states' challenge to the firing of 25,000 probationary employees on standing grounds, ruling that only the employees themselves — not the states — can sue. The Supreme Court, in a May 2026 ruling on immigration judge speech restrictions, reinforced executive control over federal employee speech and channeled grievances into the Merit Systems Protection Board. ^[7][8][9] The MSPB, however, is itself crippled. It denied class certification to federal employees challenging their terminations, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission left complaints unprocessed due to a lack of quorum. The oversight bodies meant to protect career staff have been neutralized. ^[10] Courts have occasionally pushed back. In July 2026, the Fourth Circuit blocked the firing of nineteen intelligence officers for lack of due process. But the Reyes logic applies here too: a procedural remedy does not reverse the structural change. The administration can correct the process and fire them again. ^[11] The pattern is not that the administration is winning every case. It is that winning a case does not restore what was dismantled. The administration reclassifies the architecture: at-will employment, privatized functions, politicized grant-making, lowered entry standards. The courts litigate the individual. Reclassification, once embedded in hiring rules, grant criteria, and at-will contracts, does not unwind when a ruling comes down. The slower clock does not catch up.