Schedule F

Schedule F, Schedule F is an employment category of federal government workers established in an executive order issued by U.S. Republican Pres. Donald Trump in 2020, near the end of his first term (2017–21). Executive Order 13957 was designed to eliminate standard job protections for thousands of civil servants by reclassifying them as political appointees, thus allowing Trump (or any other president) to fire them without cause (i.e., for reasons unrelated to performance) and without notice or right to appeal. Civil servants could then be replaced with political loyalists who might not fully meet the qualifications for the office, though meeting them is generally required under Title 5 of the U.S. Code (the record of federal statutes published by the House of Representatives).

Trump’s order, which was not implemented during his first term, was rescinded by Democratic Pres. Joe Biden (2021–25) when he took office in January 2021. However, on the first day of his second term (2025– ), Trump issued a new executive order, 14171, reinstating Schedule F with a few amendments and modifications. Upon its implementation, the second version of Schedule F, renamed Schedule Policy/Career, was expected to mark the biggest change in the operation of the U.S. civil service since 1883. That year the Pendleton Act introduced a competitive and merit-based hiring system for civil servants and prohibited their removal on political grounds.

Legal context

Title 5 classifies most civil servants as “competitive service” employees who, as applicants, are required to pass a competitive examination and to otherwise demonstrate knowledge, skills, and abilities. Other applicants, however, are regarded as “excepted service” employees, who may be exempt from parts of the competitive hiring process. Before the creation of Schedule F, there were five categories of excepted services, schedules A through E, which apply to various applicants, positions, or circumstances. Schedules A and B, for example, apply to positions or circumstances that would render competitive examinations “not practicable” and to applicants with certain disabilities; Schedule C applies to positions involving policy determination or confidential relations with key agency officials; Schedule D applies to positions filled by students from qualified schools; and Schedule E applies to administrative law judges. With the reinstatement of Schedule F as Schedule Policy/Career, the categories of excepted services have been greatly expanded. According to Trump’s Executive Order 14171, the new positions include those of “a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character that are not normally subject to change as a result of a Presidential transition.” Order 14171 further expands the excepted services to include “directly or indirectly supervising employees in Schedule Policy/Career positions” and positions with “duties that the [agency] Director otherwise indicates may be appropriate for inclusion.”

Political context

The official justification for Schedule F and its reinstatement as Schedule Policy/Career was that federal agencies need more flexibility in hiring and the ability to remove poorly performing employees more quickly. During his campaign for a second term as president, however, Trump described the purpose of reinstating Schedule F as “restoring the President’s authority to remove rogue bureaucrats.” Critics of Schedule F have argued that the Trump administration will use the category to subject as many federal workers as possible to loyalty pledges, thereby bending the administrative state—what Trump and his supporters call the “deep state”—to his political will. Unions representing segments of the federal workforce, including the American Federation of Government Employees, the National Treasury Employees Union, and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, have filed lawsuits strongly challenging Trump’s declared war on the deep state.

In a related development, a review of 96 research papers examining the relationship between meritocracy and government performance, published in the journal Public Administration in June 2023, found that merit-based hiring decisions and an impartial professional workforce are most likely to result in high-quality government performance. The authors concluded that Schedule F would be “likely to degrade government performance.”