What’s the story
On May 23, 2025, the public commentary window ended for a proposed Office of Personnel Management (OPM) rule that would modify the procedures for terminating career federal employees, also known as civil servants. The OPM proposed the rule on April 23.
The proposed “Improving Performance, Accountability and Responsiveness in the Civil Service” rule would reclassify policy-influencing positions under a Schedule Policy/Career group of employees created by a January 20, 2025, executive order. Reclassifying these officials’ positions as Schedule Policy/Career (formerly known as Schedule F) would remove civil service protections and would allow them to be terminated more easily than their current competitive service status legally allows.
Supporters of this move argue that it is necessary to ensure accountability when civil servants carry out presidential directives, while opponents have said that the move could politicize the civil service.
Background
On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump (R) signed Executive Order 14171, entitled “Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce.” This executive order reinstated the Schedule F classification established by the previous Executive Order 13957 on October 21, 2020. E.O. 13957 was revoked on January 22, 2021, by President Joseph Biden’s (D) Executive Order 14033, before any federal employees were formally reclassified. President Trump’s January 20 order revoked the Biden order in turn, and reinstated Trump’s October 2020 order while renaming Schedule F to Schedule Policy/Career.
As reported by the Pew Research Center, 67.3% of the federal workforce are in competitive service positions, which require procedural legal protections for employees’ jobs such as protection from discrimination and protection from removal. Proposed Schedule Policy/Career positions would be classified as excepted from these procedural requirements, similar to senior political appointees, and this change would allow the President to decide if the position should be terminated.
In its April 23, 2025, proposed rule, the OPM estimates that approximately 50,000 civil service positions would be subject to reclassification as Schedule Policy/Career. Opponents have argued that under the language of the OPM rule, “almost any career civil service position could be at risk of being politicized and fired.” The April 23, 2025, OPM proposed rule is intended to enact the January 20 E.O. 14171. Under the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA), civil service positions of a “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character” may be classified as excepted from competitive service civil service protections enshrined in the Act. Schedule Policy/Career (like Schedule F before it) is based on this CSRA language, identifying the affected positions as policy-related and therefore subject to exception.
The OPM proposed rule would reverse the findings of a May 9, 2024, OPM rule entitled “Upholding Civil Service Protections and Merit System Principles,” which asserted that this CSRA language should be read more narrowly. Unlike under Schedule F, the final classification of positions as Schedule Policy/Career would be carried out by the President rather than the OPM itself, and competitive service-type hiring procedures would continue to be used.
The May 9, 2024, OPM rule established that individual employees who were hired for a competitive civil service position would maintain protections if their position were reclassified as excepted. However, a new employee hired for a position reclassified as excepted (for instance, under Schedule Policy/Career) would not receive similar protections. In addition, the January 20, 2025, executive order declared that Biden’s E.O. 14003 was “hereby revoked, and any rules, regulations, guidance, or other agency policies effectuated under Executive Order 14003 shall not be enforced,” leaving the status of the 2024 OPM rule in question.
Where’s the fight?
The news site Fedweek.com wrote that these “two changes are widely seen as designed to counter legal challenges” that had been raised against Schedule F. In the wake of the January 20, 2025, executive order, various federal employee unions sued to block this move.
Supporters of the creation of Schedule Policy/Career argue that it is necessary to create a civil service that is more accountable and closely responsive to presidential priorities. Defending the policy on the social media site Truth Social, President Trump argued, “If these government workers refuse to advance the policy interests of the President, or are engaging in corrupt behavior, they should no longer have a job.”
Opponents of this move said it was an expansion of presidential power that threatens to politicize the civil service. In a joint statement on the social media site X, Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Mark Warner (D-VA), and Representative Gerry Connolly (D-VA) argued “President Trump has made it clear that he wants the power to hire and fire these workers based on their politics, not their qualifications—and that makes all of us less safe.”
Polls show differing opinions about the federal workforce among voters. While a 2024 poll by the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service found that 91% of voters agree that “having competent civil servants is important for having a strong American democracy” (and that 87% of voters thought the same about “having a nonpartisan civil service”), it also said that only 55% of voters agreed that “most civil servants are competent.” March 2025 polling conducted for the Napolitan Institute reported mixed support for federal workforce reductions under the Trump Administration’s DOGE initiative, where 39% of voters said that “about the right number” or “not enough” federal workers had been laid off (versus 45% who said that “too many” had). In a November 14, 2024 speech, Republican pollster Frank Luntz said that 61% of voters support a “non-partisan, nonpoliticized civil service that is less accountable to the president — meaning it is less influenced by political agendas, but it also means that the workers are harder to replace,” versus 39% who prefer a “politicized civil service that is more accountable to the president — meaning that it is more influenced by political agendas, and it is easier to replace.”
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