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Proposed Rule on Schedule F Politicizes Career Employee Jobs

beSpacific 2025-04-21

“Schedule F is an executive order that former President Donald Trump issued in October 2020 to remove the employment protections that prevent career government employees from being replaced for partisan reasons. It was rescinded by President Joe Biden as soon as he took office in January 2021. If Schedule F were to be reinstated, the president would be virtually free to fire dedicated civil servants and replace them with loyalists and ideologues “…Schedule F, this obscure rule change is essentially synonymous with the Heritage Foundation’s initiative to install as many as 50,000 conservative movement activists in the government. The reinstatement of Schedule F on “day one” is also the first step of Trump’s campaign platform, Agenda47, under which he plans to “dismantle the deep state.”

New Proposed Rule – OPM. 5 CFR Parts 210, 212, 213, 302, 432, 451, and 752 [Docket ID: OPM-2025-0004] Improving Performance, Accountability and Responsiveness in the Civil Service. AGENCY: Office of Personnel Management. ACTION: Proposed rule. Federal Register. SUMMARY: The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is proposing a rule to increase career employee accountability. Agency supervisors report great difficulty removing employees for poor performance or misconduct. The proposed rule lets policy-influencing positions be moved into Schedule Policy/Career. These positions will remain career jobs filled on a nonpartisan basis. Yet they will be at-will positions excepted from adverse action procedures or appeals. This will allow agencies to quickly remove employees from critical positions who engage in misconduct, perform poorly, or undermine the democratic process by intentionally subverting Presidential directives….”