Trump Moves 8,000 Feds into Schedule Policy/Career Roles

President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week reclassifying thousands of federal workers into Schedule Policy/Career positions. Staff moved into the new category will lose some of their civil service job protections — including the means to appeal suspensions, demotions, or firings to the Merit Systems Protection Board — making it much easier for agencies to fire them.

The Trump administration says this shift to at-will employment for “policy-influencing” positions, which affects around 8,000 workers, is necessary to increase accountability and quickly dismiss underperforming staff, but Democrats in Congress and labor unions representing federal workers say the Trump administration could use the new designation to carry out politically motivated firings. The Office of Personnel Management says the rule governing the new category “explicitly prohibits political patronage, loyalty tests, or political discrimination” and that the category cannot be used to facilitate mass layoffs.

Some of the science agency staff who have now been recategorized to the Schedule Policy/Career designation have roles advising on policy issues, legislative affairs, or managing grant programs. Some specific examples include the chief of staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the biological science administrator at the National Science Foundation, and the deputy directors for intramural and extramural research at the National Institutes of Health.

Earlier this year, OPM Director Scott Kupor said the Schedule Policy/Career designation would preserve merit-based hiring and whistleblower protections “while ensuring senior career officials responsible for advancing President Trump’s agenda can be held to the same performance expectations that exist throughout much of the American workforce.”

The American Federation of Government Employees labor union notes that Trump’s latest executive order directs agencies to set aside money to provide bonuses to Schedule Policy/Career employees through a presidential award program that will be created by OPM — creating a situation where employees who carry out Trump administration objectives may be financially rewarded, while “anyone deemed insubordinate could be fired at a moment’s notice.”

“This 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 press release. Kelley added that one of the implications of the action is that workers “who once felt comfortable reporting waste, fraud, and mismanagement at their place of employment,” will now be “afraid for their jobs if they speak out.”

President Trump has sought to implement the Schedule Policy/Career designation since his first term in office. His first executive order on this issue, then called Schedule F, was published in October 2020, just weeks before the November election, and was not implemented by President Joe Biden. On the first day of his second term, Trump signed another executive order to reinstate and rename the designation. The executive order comes just a few weeks after the Trump administration laid out plans to require that all federal workers sign a nondisclosure agreement barring them from sharing “confidential” information.

Earlier this year, the Office of Personnel Management issued a final rule directing federal agencies to identify workers who might be reclassified. That rule went into effect on March 9. Trump’s latest executive order reclassifies roughly 8,000 positions into the new category — far fewer than the 50,000 roles OPM initially estimated would be reclassified.

A recent report from the Partnership for Public Service estimates that the number of political appointees in the federal government has increased during Trump’s second term, while efforts to downsize the federal service have resulted in federal science agencies losing nearly 118,000 employees between September 2024 and February 2026. The Congressional Research Service published a report in March highlighting various ongoing and potential legal challenges facing Schedule Policy/Career, including several legislative options for Congress to consider. Three lawsuits filed in early 2025, including one brought by AFGE and other labor unions, are ongoing. Democratic members of Congress, including Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, have been vocal in their opposition to Schedule Policy/Career, both co-sponsoring the Save the Civil Service Act, and launching the Federal Workforce Caucus to promote stronger protections for federal workers.