The top advisor of the federal panel responsible for overseeing the pay and status of federal employees has resigned from the post in protest of President Trump stripping civil servant status from hundreds of thousands of federal workers, Politico reports.

An executive order Trump signed on Friday required federal agencies to place all employees in “positions of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character” that are “not normally subject to change as a result of a Presidential transition” into a newly-created “Category F” which would put their jobs at the discretion of the president or any presidential appointee.

“[I]t is clear that its stated purpose notwithstanding, the Executive Order is nothing more than a smokescreen for what is clearly an attempt to require the political loyalty of those who advise the President, or failing that, to enable their removal with little if any due process,” Federal Salary Council Chair Ron Sanders, a Trump appointee, wrote in his resignation letter.

Sanders was appointed to the Council, which oversees such things as location-based federal pay adjustments, was a Trump appointee in 2017.  He served in a similar position under the GW Bush administration.

A lifelong republican, Sanders wrote that he cannot be part of an administration that seeks “to replace apolitical expertise with political obeisance. Career Federal employees are legally and duty-bound to be nonpartisan; they take an oath to preserve and protect our Constitution and the rule of law…not to be loyal to a particular President or Administration.”

Trump executive order implementing the change requires that the agencies move these positions to the new designation by January 19th, 2021, meaning that Trump could potentially fire everyone with that designation the morning of the Inauguration of the new president.

The executive order would impact positions like career federal prosecutors working for US Attorneys around the country.  Trump could conceivably fire all of them, who work under political appointees, in order to stall or impede investigations into his actions.

It could also allow political appointees to slide into civil service positions if he loses the election because political appointees could be assigned to these positions.

The move also potentially strips union protections from the workers, a move that will likely be fought in court.