Politico: “The Health and Human Services Department is moving hundreds of senior career staff to a new civil service classification that will make it easier to fire them. President Donald Trump tinkered with the idea late in his first term and the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, recommended the reclassification of career staff with policy-making responsibilities in its Project 2025 blueprint for Trump’s second term. Trump dismissed that document during his campaign, but has since adopted many of its proposals. The architect of Project 2025, current White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, has said career staff impeded Trump’s policies during Trump’s first term. An official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an HHS agency, granted anonymity to reveal internal communications, told POLITICO some managers had received emails Friday that said some employees were moving to new, at-will employment classifications as part of a first phase of reclassifications that would grow in the future. Another HHS official who would only agree to speak anonymously said the move was “intended to strengthen accountability for supervisors with significant policy-influencing responsibilities.” Affected HHS employees will no longer benefit from protections granted to career civil servants that make them harder to fire. Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in office to create the new classification. The White House Office of Personnel Management, which implemented a rule about the change that became effective in March, has said the rule “will principally affect removal procedures for employees in policy-influencing positions whose performance or conduct is judged to be deficient.”