Trump federal workers policy reached its most consequential milestone yet on June 3, 2026, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order formalizing Schedule Policy/Career, a new employment classification that strips civil service job protections from approximately 8,000 senior federal employees. Agencies now have seven days to update affected personnel records. The order eliminates appeal rights to the Merit Systems Protection Board for those reclassified employees and makes it significantly easier for agencies to discipline or terminate them for any reason, without the standard procedural requirements that have protected career civil servants for generations.
What Is Schedule Policy/Career and Who Does It Affect?
An executive order President Donald Trump signed Wednesday afternoon formalizes the long-expected federal employment classification and eliminates civil service protections for thousands of senior-level positions across government. The move is meant to boost workforce accountability, but has also drawn sharp criticism from federal unions, employee organizations, and other stakeholders. simplywall
President Trump has issued an executive order turning an estimated 8,000 federal workers into at-will employees, which means the government could fire them without providing any reason. The move culminates an effort Trump launched during his first term to strip vast numbers of federal employees of civil service protections designed to insulate their work from political interference. Chartmill
The order reclassifies about 8,000 workers to a Schedule Policy/Career category created during Trump’s first days in his second term, covering positions with a “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating” nature. ChartMill
The targeted 8,000 career federal positions for the new classification is far lower than OPM’s initial estimate that Schedule Policy/Career would cover about 50,000 positions. Some earlier estimates had also suggested as many as 200,000 positions could be converted. ESPN
Which Federal Positions Are Being Reclassified?
Approximately 97% of the governmentwide positions targeted for Schedule Policy/Career are at or above the GS-15 level. A smaller number of positions at the GS-13 and GS-14 levels, mostly within the Office of Management and Budget, will be converted as well. ESPN
Schedule Policy/Career will generally cover the following categories of federal employees:
Leaders of agency subcomponents and divisions; leaders of certain agency field offices and regional offices; chief agency officers such as CIOs and chief learning officers; senior HR officials; agency deputies and chiefs of staff; senior program managers; senior-level regulation writers; high-level agency attorneys; senior officials involved in policy development, policy advising, budget and spending allocations, federal grantmaking, internal administrative and operations policies, and strategic planning; and senior officials in public affairs, legislative affairs, and intergovernmental affairs. ESPN
The White House published an appendix of all positions that will be converted to Schedule Policy/Career. ESPN
What Protections Do Affected Employees Lose?
Employees who are moved into the new category will be exempted from long-standing civil service protections. Schedule Policy/Career will make it easier for agencies to discipline or fire affected employees for any reason, with no opportunity for employees to appeal adverse actions to the Merit Systems Protection Board. Employees will also be unable to challenge their initial reclassifications. ESPN
In most cases, reclassified employees will also no longer be eligible for student loan repayment options, nor will they be able to receive recruitment, retention, or relocation incentives. ESPN
Nearly all of the 8,000 people affected are at the highest level of the civil service, known as GS-15. They include leaders of policy offices and their chiefs of staff, heads of regional offices, program managers, senior public affairs officers, and those overseeing spending and grants. Chartmill
OPM Director Scott Kupor emphasized that no loyalty tests will be used, nor will the Schedule Policy/Career employees lose their whistleblower protections. Under federal law, they also cannot be fired based on political affiliation. But it would be up to agencies to enforce the law. Chartmill
OPM Director Scott Kupor Defends the Order
Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor told reporters during a press call Wednesday: “It’s also about a restoration, in our mind, of the democratic process. What Schedule Policy/Career does is really nothing new. This is exactly the way the system worked for a very long time. In order to affect the policy priorities of the administration, we need to have people willing to and capable of carrying out those directives.” ESPN
Kupor continued: “You can have any political views, but if you allow those views to basically interfere with your willingness to actually carry out lawful orders and policy directives with the administration, then this provides a mechanism for people in those agencies to be able to be removed effectively at-will.” ESPN
A senior administration official told reporters: “It’s a relatively small slice of senior career positions. There were serious issues with policy resistance in the first term, and this is designed to provide an accountability tool to ensure that that can be swiftly addressed.” ESPN
The executive order states directly that ensuring affected employees can be removed for misconduct or poor performance is essential to protecting democratic self-government by an elected president.
Federal Unions and Critics: Why They Say This Politicizes the Civil Service
Many federal unions, employee organizations, good government groups, and individual federal employees raised concerns that Schedule Policy/Career will politicize the federal workforce, damage the non-partisan nature of the career civil service, and undermine democracy. In April 2025, OPM’s proposed regulations on Schedule Policy/Career received over 40,000 public comments, with about 94% of commenters opposed to the regulation. simplywall
Democracy Forward, one of the organizations challenging the reclassification in court, stated its position directly. Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said in a statement Wednesday that the country has long relied on a “professional, nonpartisan civil service.” Perryman added: “When government experts can be fired without cause, it’s not just federal workers who are harmed — it’s the people across the country who rely on these essential services every day.” ChartMill
The American Federation of Government Employees also condemned the order. AFGE National President Everett Kelley said: “This is a blatant attempt to corrupt the federal government by eliminating employees’ due process rights so they can be fired for political reasons.” simplywall
Critics argue the central risk is not the stated goal of accountability but the practical consequence: senior career experts in regulation writing, public affairs, grant administration, and legal interpretation can now be removed by political appointees who disagree with their professional judgments, without any of the procedural checks that have historically protected those judgments from political interference.
Lawsuits Already Filed Against Schedule Policy/Career
The Trump administration is facing a lawsuit against its efforts to remove civil service protections from a swath of career federal employees. Plaintiffs allege that the creation of Schedule Policy/Career violates due process rights, exceeds presidential authority, and contradicts federal statute. ESPN
The new Schedule Policy/Career category allows agencies to fire these employees without the usual procedural requirements. Several lawsuits are challenging the reclassification. ChartMill
The legal challenges will focus on two primary arguments: first, whether the president has the statutory authority to eliminate Merit Systems Protection Board appeal rights through executive order without congressional action; and second, whether the reclassification process itself violates the due process rights of affected employees who cannot challenge their conversion to the new category.
History: How Schedule F Became Schedule Policy/Career
The policy has a longer and more contested history than the current executive order makes it appear.
Trump attempted a similar effort during his first term, although it was short-lived. A 2020 executive order that came in the final few months of the president’s first term went largely unimplemented and was quickly rescinded under the Biden administration. The revival of Schedule F, which has since been renamed, comes with a longer runway for agencies to begin converting employees. ESPN
In 2024, the Biden administration issued regulations attempting to reinforce civil service protections for the career federal workforce and block Schedule F from resurfacing. The Trump administration later rescinded the 2024 rule and issued its own regulations on Schedule Policy/Career. ESPN
Plans to revive the policy formerly known as Schedule F have been in the works since the president’s first day in office. Earlier this year, OPM issued final regulations detailing governmentwide implementation plans for Schedule Policy/Career. In the following months, agencies were expected to assemble plans for which employees and positions would be targeted for transfer into the new classification. ESPN
What Affected Federal Employees Should Do Now
Following Wednesday’s executive order, agencies now have seven days to make conforming changes to the affected employees’ personnel records. ESPN
Federal employees who believe they may be affected by the reclassification have limited immediate options. Because employees will be unable to challenge their initial reclassifications, the practical recourse is to seek legal counsel immediately if facing adverse action, to document any instances of politically motivated direction that may violate the statutory prohibition on firing based on political affiliation, and to consult their union representatives if applicable. ESPN
Employees should also verify whether their specific position is listed in the White House appendix of converted positions, which was published alongside the executive order. Whistleblower protections remain in place for all Schedule Policy/Career employees and can be exercised through the Office of Special Counsel.
Latest Updates
The executive order was signed Wednesday, June 3, 2026. Federal News Network confirmed that OPM Director Scott Kupor defended the order in a press call, saying agencies have seven days to update personnel records and that approximately 97% of affected positions are at the GS-15 level or above. NPR via public radio affiliates confirmed that Kupor emphasized no loyalty tests will be used and that whistleblower protections remain in place under federal law. The New York Times confirmed the executive order strips job protections from federal workers effective immediately upon signing. ESPNChartmill
Full sources: NPR | Federal News Network | New York Times
Broader Implications
The creation of Schedule Policy/Career, at whatever final scale it reaches, represents the most significant structural change to the American civil service since the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. The principle that career federal employees serve the institution of government rather than the political agenda of any single administration has been a cornerstone of American public administration for nearly a century.
Supporters argue that the president, as the elected head of the executive branch, has a democratic mandate to implement his agenda and that career employees who resist lawful directives are themselves acting undemocratically. Critics argue that the nonpartisan civil service is precisely what allows government to function across administrations and that eliminating its protections for senior policy positions creates the conditions for systematic politicization of regulation writing, grant distribution, legal interpretation, and public information.
The courts will ultimately determine the legal boundaries of the executive order. Congress, if it chooses to act, could address the question through legislation. And the career federal employees caught between those institutions will be navigating a fundamentally different employment environment than the one they entered.
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Frequently Asked Questions
1. What did Trump’s executive order on federal workers do on June 3, 2026? President Trump signed an executive order formalizing Schedule Policy/Career, a new employment classification that strips civil service protections from approximately 8,000 senior federal employees. Affected employees can now be fired for any reason without appeal rights to the Merit Systems Protection Board. Agencies have seven days to update personnel records.
2. Which federal employees are affected by Schedule Policy/Career? Nearly all affected employees hold GS-15 positions, the highest level of the career civil service. The classification covers leaders of agency subcomponents and field offices, senior program managers, regulation writers, public affairs officers, budget and grant officials, chiefs of staff, chief agency officers such as CIOs, and senior attorneys, among others.
3. What civil service protections do Schedule Policy/Career employees lose? Affected employees lose the ability to appeal adverse employment actions to the Merit Systems Protection Board, cannot challenge their initial reclassification, and in most cases lose eligibility for student loan repayment and recruitment, retention, or relocation incentives. They retain whistleblower protections and cannot legally be fired based on political affiliation.
4. What legal challenges exist against Schedule Policy/Career? At least one active lawsuit argues that the creation of Schedule Policy/Career violates employees’ due process rights, exceeds presidential authority, and contradicts federal statute. Democracy Forward and other organizations have filed legal challenges. Courts have not yet issued final rulings on the merits.
5. How is Schedule Policy/Career different from the original Schedule F? Schedule Policy/Career is the renamed and restructured version of Schedule F, which Trump first introduced in a 2020 executive order during his first term. That order was rescinded by President Biden in January 2021. The Biden administration also issued regulations in 2024 to block a future revival. The Trump administration rescinded those Biden rules and issued new OPM regulations before signing the June 3 executive order formalizing the current policy.
