President Donald Trump has yet to launch a crucial part of his workforce agenda that could rip civil service protections from thousands of federal employees.
The Trump administration created a new classification that will essentially make career staffers “at will,” making it much easier for their respective agencies to fire them. Critics of the president believe the category, called Schedule Policy/Career, is meant to purge the civil service of impartial expertise and instead steer it toward his political goals.
But Trump still has not taken the final step of placing employees in the classification, despite having the green light from his own administration to do so for almost two months now.
Jenny Mattingley, vice president for public policy and stakeholder engagement at the Partnership for Public Service, noted the classification is supposed to apply to policy-influencing civil servants, which has been difficult for agencies to nail down.
“I don’t think it was as easy as they thought it would be to determine which positions,” Mattingley told POLITICO’s E&E News. “What on earth does policymaking, policy advocating, policy influencing — who does that apply to? There’s zero definition so you could go as broad or as narrow as you want.”
On his first day back in the White House, Trump signed an executive order to establish Schedule Policy/Career.
The Office of Personnel Management drafted a rule in response, which became effective earlier this year on March 9. The agency estimated roughly 50,000 positions could move into the classification, but the president will make “the final decision” on who is placed there.
“Please note that placement of positions into Schedule Policy/Career requires an executive order from the President,” OPM Director Scott Kupor wrote in a memo sent to agency heads. “Until such an order is issued, agencies must continue to treat employees and positions as they are currently classified.”
No such order has been forthcoming yet. And the administration offered no clues on its timing when contacted for this story.
“Ensuring federal employees faithfully and diligently perform their duties for the American people remains a top priority for President Trump,” a White House official said in response to questions. “We will not get ahead of the president on any additional action.”
An OPM spokesperson declined to comment.
Those tracking the category have been left wondering when it be filled and by whom.
“We don’t know which employees necessarily, which positions necessarily, or even when, because executive orders could come out once, they could come out multiple times,” Mattingley said. “Hard to say.”
Positions classified at Schedule Policy/Career will still be nonpartisan, career jobs, OPM’s rule indicated. Those positions, however, will now be treated as “at will” and excepted from adverse action procedures or appeals.
Don Kettl, professor emeritus and former dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, said the administration “clearly intended” to move much more quickly.
“The Schedule PC mandate, after all, was part of the package of executive orders issued on Inauguration Day,” Kettl said. “But that was before DOGE got into gear, which upset all the other personnel plans of the second Trump administration. It’s taken a very, very long time to sort out the administration’s personnel issues since then.”
Years in the making
Conservative allies of the administration have clamored for the classification. It’s needed to take hold of the so-called deep state, the government’s career workforce that thwarted Trump during his first term, they claim.
“Career employee policy resistance is widespread at agencies,” said Ben Straka, a research and government affairs associate for the Freedom Foundation, in a public comment on the rule. “There is currently little to ensure that policy-influencing career employees there and elsewhere operate fairly and with accountability to the American public they serve.”
OPM cited the foundation’s case study on such opposition at the National Labor Relations Board in its final regulation on Schedule Policy/Career.
Under initial guidance for the classification, agencies were required to do “a preliminary review” of positions and then a final one, all last year, on which jobs should be moved into the new category.
Agencies drafted those reviews and sent them to OPM. Nevertheless, in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, EPA and the Department of the Interior withheld positions they submitted for the classification.
Meanwhile, litigation to block the category remains active.
The American Federation of Government Employees, the nation’s biggest federal worker union, along with other labor and public interest groups filed an updated complaint in March. The National Treasury Employees Union, another large federal union, also has an ongoing lawsuit.
The classification first emerged late on in Trump’s first term. He signed an order then to create Schedule F, which has now been rebranded as Schedule Policy/Career.
Few agencies, however, complied with the order, the Government Accountability Office found. Documents obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News show that at the time, EPA identified 579 employees that could fit into the category.
Former President Joe Biden revoked the order after coming into office and developed regulations to strengthen safeguards for career employees, which Trump has since pulled back.
The president’s supporters were ready to revive the classification when he returned to power.
“Schedule F, which President Trump has already run on, that seems to be like a Day One thing,” OMB Director Russ Vought said in an interview with Tucker Carlson after Trump’s 2024 election victory. “He has already instituted [it] in his first term. We just didn’t get to get it across the finish line.”
“Don’t read too much into the delay in covering positions, as there have been a few diversions,” said Ron Sanders, a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and a former senior executive service member for more than 20 years.
“Indeed, some of OPM’s more recent rule changes, like the ones dealing with accountability and performance management, make a lot of the issues regarding that coverage moot,” said Sanders, who held top-level human resources positions at the IRS, Defense Department and the intelligence community.
Departures mount as wait drags on
The administration changed aspects of the category for this Trump term. One “structural difference” with the 2020 order behind Schedule F is the president — and not OPM — will transfer the positions, according to the rule finalized earlier this year.
In addition, the administration added a section saying Schedule Policy/Career employees are not required “to personally or politically support” the president or administration policies, seemingly in response to criticism the category will bring back a corrupt spoils system with government staffed by political cronies.
If the administration designed the classification for mass firings at agencies, they may have already accomplished that objective through other means.
More than 420,000 employees have left the government since Trump’s inauguration, according to data compiled from March by OPM. That includes over 139,000 who opted into the “deferred resignation” program, created by the administration for employees to go on administrative leave and choose to leave later.
In addition, the administration is reshaping the federal workforce through other regulations outside of Schedule Policy/Career. OPM has drafted rules to expand suitability standards, end certain layoff protections, cap performance ratings and soften safeguards for probationary employees.
“I think part of that is that Schedule PC isn’t the right tool to deal with some of the things they thought they were dealing with,” said Mattingley, who noted original discussions of its use focused on pushing out poor performers at agencies.
“They’re having to hire people back because they’ve discovered that they actually need these employees to do the work,” she added. “I suspect there’s a little bit of recalibrating in terms of what it is they’re trying to do.”
Kettl said the classification “is certainly one of the premier items on the administration’s workforce agenda.”
“It’s certain to happen. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened sooner,” he said. “But this is only one of the many personnel surprises that the administration has dished out.”
Contact Kevin Bogardus on the encrypted messaging app Signal at KevinBogardus.89
