White House Secretly Pressured the Board Meant to Protect Civil Servants — Sherk Told MSPB Head to Follow "the Company Line," Board Then Broke with Decades of Precedent, and 50,000 Workers Lost Protections
A New York Times investigation by Michael Schmidt reveals that the Trump White House secretly pressured the Merit Systems Protection Board — the independent agency created after Nixonian abuses to protect federal employees from political firings — into adopting the administration's theory that the president can fire any civil servant at will. White House aide James Sherk, author of the Schedule F memo and a man who has said "every federal employee should serve at the pleasure of the president," met with acting MSPB head Henry Kerner while Kerner was being considered for a permanent position. Sherk told Kerner he was expected to follow the Office of Legal Counsel's opinions on unitary executive theory — described by experts as "little different from calling a federal judge and telling him how to rule." The MSPB then broke with decades of precedent and ruled that it could weigh in on constitutional questions in a way that effectively endorsed the president's power to fire employees without cause. This followed Trump firing Democratic MSPB member Cathy Harris in February 2025 — converting the bipartisan board into one controlled by his appointees — and the Supreme Court blocking her reinstatement via shadow docket. On March 9, 2026, the Schedule Policy/Career rule took effect, stripping civil service protections from up to 50,000 federal workers, making them at-will employees who cannot appeal firings to the MSPB, cannot access statutory whistleblower protections, and cannot challenge their reclassification. An initial executive order reclassified about 8,000 positions. When DOJ prosecutor Maureen Comey (daughter of James Comey) was fired via an Article II letter, a federal judge ruled she could bypass the compromised MSPB and sue directly in federal court — finding the constitutional basis for her firing placed her case "outside the universe" Congress intended the MSPB to resolve. The D.C. Circuit dissent warned: "Under my colleagues' reasoning, it appears that no independent agencies may lawfully exist in this country."