The Trump administration is working on a new federal personnel rule that would make it easier for President Donald Trump to fire about 50,000 senior career civil servants whose roles affect public policy.
This move would affect about 2% of the federal workforce.
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is expected to create a new “Schedule Policy/Career” classification this week. It is a resurrection of the president’s “Schedule F” proposal that he put forward near the end of his first term.
Former President Joe Biden scrapped Schedule F shortly after taking office in 2021.
The White House says the change is needed to remove federal workers who resist or try to sabotage the president’s agenda.
Under the new rule, federal agencies are empowered to shift jobs that affect policy out of the traditional competitive civil service and into the Schedule Policy/Career category. Employees in this category do not have civil service protections such as standard notice requirements and the right to appeal their firings with the Merit Systems Protection Board.
Following my Day One Executive Order, the Office of Personnel Management will be issuing new Civil Service Regulations for career government employees. Moving forward, career government employees, working on policy matters, will be classified as “Schedule Policy/Career,” and will…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 18, 2025
Critics, including unions and government watchdogs, warn that the new rule would politicize civil service and return Washington, D.C. to a system where job security depends on partisan loyalty.
National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) President Doreen Greenwald called the rule “a dangerous step backward to a political spoils system that Congress expressly rejected 142 years ago.” She said the plan “converts federal nonpartisan career jobs into political favors for loyalists” and unconstitutionally deprives workers of due-process rights.
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The Government Accountability Project’s Louis Clark said the move is “an illegitimate and undemocratic effort to reimpose a spoils system for hundreds of thousands of government positions.”
The new Schedule F (Schedule Policy/Career) would put certain federal workers into a new category that has fewer job protections.
— Alex Ruoff (@Alexruoff) February 5, 2026
Of the 40,000 comments on the rule, OPM says, "7 were not posted because they contained threats to the President..."https://t.co/CuZX3SPzOQ
On the other side, supporters of the rule contend that the shift is about accountability. They highlight complaints that it is too difficult to discipline or fire federal workers who work against elected officials’ policies.
Michael Rigas, a former OPM director, said the policy is “an attempt to address one of the chief concerns that federal employees themselves have articulated year after year.”
Former White House labor adviser James Sherk said that if this were about a spoils system, “we would’ve created a whole bunch of Schedule C positions.”
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