When Biden administration officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) introduced a new regulatory rule in 2022 entitled “Reproductive Health Services,” they reversed longstanding federal laws banning VA from providing abortions.

The rule prompted Army veteran and career VA nurse Stephanie Carter to seek a religious accommodation to exempt her from having to participate in a medical procedure to which she deeply objected as a matter of her Christian faith. Twice she was told by VA officials that no such accommodation was available, which was untrue. So, with the assistance of Plano, Texas-based First Liberty Institute (FLI), she took her case to the federal courts.

It took several years, but on December 18, 2025, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a memorandum directing VA officials to withdraw the 2022 rule and to cease providing abortion services using federal facilities and resources, thus eliminating the threat to Carter’s religious freedom.

“We commend the DOJ for taking bold steps toward protecting religious freedom for those within the VA by ensuring that health care providers will not be forced to provide abortion services. VA doctors and nurses heroically care for our nation’s veterans — they shouldn’t be forced to perform no-limit abortions against their religious beliefs,” FLI Senior Counsel Chris Motz said in a statement following the DOJ action.

“The VA tried to do just that to Army veteran and nurse practitioner Stephanie Carter in 2022, who had to bring a costly and difficult lawsuit to vindicate her religious freedoms, something no American should have to do. The DOJ’s new legal guidance ensures the VA will remain free from coercion for people of faith,” Motz said.

In a related case, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), administered by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), covers an estimated eight million federal employees, retirees, and dependents. The FEHBP is the biggest single employer-sponsored health insurance program in the U.S. As for the VA and every other federal department and agency, multiple federal laws have for decades barred FEHBP from using federal resources to pay for abortion services.

But according to Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), and 22 other Republican senators and representatives, officials within the FEHBP bureaucracy recently came up with a novel interpretation of the law to get around the abortion services ban.

In a December 5 letter to OPM Director Scott Kupor, Lee, Smith, and the other signers described the problem.

“In its regulatory preamble (78 FR 60654, October 2, 2013) and on its Frequently Asked Questions webpage, OPM claims that these abortion subsidies are allowed by attributing the segregated costs of the elective abortion coverage and associated administrative expenses to the individual’s contribution, rather than the taxpayers’ contribution,” the signers told Kupor. The OPM chief is a presidential appointee with Senate confirmation.

“OPM’s use of this accounting gimmick to grant abortion subsidies to Congress is not provided for under Section 1303 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and is blatantly illegal under the Smith Amendment’s strict requirement for a complete exclusion of elective abortion coverage for federal employees. By flouting the Smith Amendment, such subsidies also violate the Anti-deficiency Act, which prohibits the authorization of expenditures or obligations without an appropriation by law,” the signers continued.

When The Washington Stand asked an OPM spokesman about the situation, the response was that Kupor was aware of the December 5 letter, and the agency is moving to address the issue. No specific actions, however, were described as forthcoming or promised to restore the FEHBP to compliance with the law.

These two situations, in which obscure officials at VA and FEHBP deep within the bureaucracy found novel ways of getting around a clear provision of federal law with which they disagree, point to a rarely debated but critically important aspect of the constitutional system by which we Americans govern ourselves.

Under the Constitution, Congress writes the law, the president enforces the law, and the Supreme Court interprets the law. But the president faces a unique challenge in seeking to enforce the laws Congress passes. He is the commander in chief and the sole official within the entire federal government who is elected (with the vice president) by the entire nation, but he is only one person sitting in the Oval Office in the White House.

Beyond the White House, the federal executive branch consists of at least 441 different departments and agencies. That qualifier — “at least” — is necessary because nobody in the federal government knows with confidence exactly how many agencies there are!

And working within those hundreds of federal departments and agencies are nearly three million government workers (a figure that includes USPS workers), with approximately 2.1 million of them being full-time career civil servants who, like tenured college professors, enjoy such substantial job security that they are all but immune from termination.

That means the civil servants who do the day-to-day work of the government have tremendous leeway in how they do their jobs. And if, as happened at VA and FEHBP, these officials enforce policies that conflict with those approved by a majority of American voters, it can take years of litigation and related efforts to establish or restore the proper approach.

All but invisible within the federal workforce are the approximately 4,000 positions whose occupants are directly appointed by the president, working through the White House Office of Presidential Personnel. Most of these positions are known as Schedule C jobs and are held by individuals who support the chief executive’s policies and who often worked in his presidential campaign. Many Schedule C jobs are non-managerial and advisory in terms of their duties.

Then there are approximately 800 non-career senior executive service (SES) positions that typically are managerial, and these are usually appointed by a department or agency head, with the approval of the White House personnel office. Finally, there are about 1,300 executive-level appointees by the president, including members of his Cabinet and various deputies, ambassadors, and commissioners who must be confirmed by the Senate.

In other words, the president directly appoints only 0.21% of the 2.8 million executive branch government workers for whom he is technically responsible. And it is all but impossible for a chief executive to exercise effective day-to-day policy management across the entire workforce.

That’s why it is vitally important for the president to appoint the smartest, most experienced, and wisest available talent, according to Heritage Foundation Senior Fellow Robert Moffit. Moffit served in multiple high-level non-career SES positions during the Reagan and first Bush administrations, including tenure at OPM, where he learned the ways and means of the federal bureaucracy.

Writing at the outset of the second Bush presidency, Moffit’s observations in 2001 about the importance of wise presidential hiring remain as relevant today as ever.

“It is often said, correctly, that ‘personnel is policy.’ The nexus between personnel management and policy management is therefore crucial. Good policies cannot be advanced without good, capable, and committed personnel to formulate, implement, aggressively promote, and steadfastly defend them,” Moffit wrote.

“Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald W. Reagan were noteworthy in this respect for making strong and effective Cabinet appointments and solid White House staffing decisions. Reagan, in particular, demonstrated the value of having trusted ‘lieutenants’ in the policy and supporting roles of his administration, giving his Cabinet appointees policy options, preparing regulatory initiatives and dealing effectively with Members of Congress and their staff,” he said.

When President Donald Trump began his second term in the Oval Office, he had the benefit of four years to reflect on the lessons learned during his first term. Among those lessons was Trump’s recognition of the crucial importance of wise appointments, but also of the need for giving a chief executive significantly more eyes and ears in the bowels of the bureaucracy.

On his first day in office the second time, Trump signed an executive order (EO) that restored an initiative he’d begun near the end of his first term and that his successor had quashed, the creation of Schedule F federal managers who, while having career status, can be more easily disciplined or even terminated for failing to carry out the policy decisions of the president.

In that EO, Trump noted that “Article II of the United States Constitution vests the President with the sole and exclusive authority over the executive branch, including the authority to manage the Federal workforce to ensure effective execution of Federal law. A critical aspect of this executive function is the responsibility to maintain professionalism and accountability within the civil service,” the order declared.

“This accountability is sorely lacking today. Only 41 percent of civil service supervisors are confident that they can remove an employee who engaged in insubordination or serious misconduct. Even fewer supervisors — 26 percent — are confident that they can remove an employee for poor performance,” the EO continued.

“Accountability is essential for all federal employees, but it is especially important for those who are in policy-influencing positions. These personnel are entrusted to shape and implement actions that have a significant impact on all Americans. Any power they have is delegated by the President, and they must be accountable to the President, who is the only member of the executive branch, other than the Vice President, elected and directly accountable to the American people,” the EO insisted.

“In recent years, however, there have been numerous and well-documented cases of career federal employees resisting and undermining the policies and directives of their executive leadership. Principles of good administration, therefore, necessitate action to restore accountability to the career civil service, beginning with positions of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character,” the order noted.

The EO also changed the title of the new positions from “Schedule F” to “Schedule Policy/Career.”

Shortly after Trump signed the EO, federal employee unions, led by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), sued in federal court to prevent implementation. That suit is currently winding its way through the federal court system.

Assuming the ultimate result will be that the Trump administration is able to implement the Schedule Policy/Career program, it is estimated that approximately 50,000 career managers in the executive branch will be covered by Schedule Policy/Career regulations. As a result, Trump and whoever succeeds him in the White House will have far greater leverage to assure government workers carry out policies endorsed by the majority of American voters.