President Trump signed an executive order on Monday that reinstates a plan from his prior administration to create a new Schedule F classification for Federal agency employees in policy-making positions that will make it easier for the new administration to replace them.
President Trump first created the Schedule F policy through an October 2020 executive order, which aimed to remove existing civil service protections for the upper ranks of the Federal workforce.
Ultimately, the executive order calling for the creation of Schedule F was not implemented. President Joe Biden canceled his predecessor’s order shortly after taking office in 2021, saying it “provides a pathway to burrow political appointees into the civil service.”
Monday’s reinstatement of the executive order changes the term “Schedule F” – in which the ‘F’ designates an excepted service schedule – to “Schedule Policy/Career.” Despite its new name, the order aims to achieve the same goals.
“In recent years, … there have been numerous and well-documented cases of career Federal employees resisting and undermining the policies and directives of their executive leadership,” the executive order says. “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 Office of Personnel Management (OPM) published a final rule in April 2024 that clarifies and reinforces long-standing protections and merit system principles for thousands of Federal employees. This makes it more difficult for the Trump administration to reapproach a Schedule F-type arrangement, but not impossible.
The final rule ensures that once a career civil servant earns protections they cannot be taken away by an involuntary move from the competitive service to the excepted service.
The rule also prevents terms like “confidential, policy determining, policymaking, or policy-advocating” positions – terminology used to define Schedule F employees that would lack civil service protections – from being applied to career civil servants.
Former OPM Acting Director Rob Shriver explained to reporters last week that the Trump administration will need to jump through some hoops to reinstate Schedule F and change OPM’s rule.
For instance, Shriver said it will need to follow the same public, transparent process to change the rule. This includes proposing a regulation, accepting public comments, and then issuing a final regulation.
“It’s not just about following that process. They’d also have to justify why their position was the better position, why their position was more grounded in the current laws than our position, [and they] might have to have the kind of administrative record that backs that up, that we have in support of our regulation,” Shriver said.
“The regulation that we have on the books is the strongest action that this administration could have taken in support of the policy that we believe in, which is that the career civil servants are essential to our democracy, and that decisions about Federal hiring and firing should be based on merit and not partisan politics,” he added.
The reinstatement of Schedule F also drew opposition from lawmakers, including House Oversight and Reform Committee Ranking Member Gerry Connolly, D-Va.
Last week, Rep. Connolly reintroduced the Saving the Civil Service Act along with Reps. Kweisi Mfume, D-Md., Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Don Bacon, R-Neb., and in the Senate by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., joined by 16 cosponsors. This bill aims to blunt the creation of the Schedule F classification – now known as Schedule Policy/Career.
“Donald Trump has used his first day in office to begin the purge of the nonpartisan civil service of experts, use the Federal workforce as a piggy bank for billionaire oligarchs like Elon Musk, and politicize the services that the Federal government provides to the American people each and every day,” Rep. Connolly said in a statement on Monday.
“As these draconian orders inevitably make their way through the courts, my colleagues and I will man the ramparts in defense of our civil service and the American people they so proudly serve,” he added.
The reinstatement of the executive order also drew opposition from the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) – the largest Federal employee union.
“President Trump’s order is a blatant attempt to corrupt the Federal government by eliminating employees’ due process rights so they can be fired for political reasons,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a statement. “It will remove hundreds of thousands of Federal jobs from the nonpartisan, professional civil service and make them answerable to the will of one man.”
“AFGE urges Congress to intervene immediately to stop Schedule F. Every American has a stake in ensuring that Federal employees remain free to carry out the mission of the agencies that employ them without fear of political interference,” Kelley said.
