Schedule F revived: converting career civil servants to at-will employees

Editor's note: the orders stripping these protections are on the record, but whether they are unlawful is pending in court and no official finding establishes it.

On his first day back in office, Trump signed Executive Order 14171, reviving and rebranding his first-term 'Schedule F' concept as 'Schedule Policy/Career', a new excepted-service category for 'policy-influencing' federal positions that strips the adverse-action and appeal protections career civil servants have held for over a century. OPM finalized the implementing rule roughly a year later, and a further order on June 3, 2026 designated approximately 8,000 additional non-partisan positions for conversion.

The rule removes affected employees from Merit Systems Protection Board appeal rights and shifts whistleblower-claim handling from the independent Office of Special Counsel to internal agency processes, meaning the same offices being reclassified also lose the external checks that would normally review a retaliatory firing. AFGE President Everett Kelley called it 'one of the largest acts of political corruption in American history' if allowed to proceed, warning it would let 'tens of thousands of experienced, nonpartisan civil servants' be 'ushered out... and replaced by political loyalists.'

A coalition of federal unions (AFGE, AFSCME, AFL-CIO, PEER) filed a consolidated legal challenge, updated in March 2026, arguing the rule unlawfully implements the underlying executive order; litigation was ongoing as of the write-up date. The rule formally forbids firing for political affiliation while permitting removal for 'deliberate obstruction of presidential policy', a standard critics say functions as a political-loyalty test in practice even if not by name.