President Donald Trump signed an executive order on June 4, 2026, formally converting approximately 8,000 senior career federal employees into at-will workers under a new classification called "Schedule Policy/Career," stripping the strongest job protections the nonpartisan civil service has held since the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. The affected workers have seven days before agencies begin changing their personnel records. They have no right to appeal.
The order is the final and decisive step in a campaign Trump attempted in the last weeks of his first term as "Schedule F," only to see President Biden rescind it on day one of his administration in 2021. This time, the runway is longer and the implementation machinery is in place.
Who Gets Reclassified and What They Lose
Approximately 97% of the 8,000 targeted positions are at the GS-15 level, the highest pay grade for most U.S. civilian federal employees, with some earning up to $200,000 annually. A smaller tranche of GS-13 and GS-14 positions, concentrated in the Office of Management and Budget, are also included.
The roles covered are not entry-level paper-pushers. They include leaders of policy offices and their chiefs of staff, heads of regional offices, program managers, senior public affairs officers, budget and grant overseers, senior attorneys, senior regulation writers, and chiefs of intergovernmental and legislative affairs.
Under the new classification, agencies can discipline or remove these employees for any reason. Workers lose their right to appeal adverse actions to the Merit Systems Protection Board. They also lose eligibility for student loan repayment benefits and recruitment or retention incentives. They cannot challenge their own reclassification.
"For generations, our country has relied on a professional, nonpartisan civil service. 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." — Skye Perryman, President and CEO, Democracy Forward
The Administration's Stated Rationale
Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor framed the order as a restoration of democratic accountability. "It's also about a restoration, in our mind, of the democratic process," Kupor told reporters Wednesday. "In order to affect the policy priorities of the administration, we need to have people willing to and capable of carrying out those directives."
Kupor added: "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."
A senior administration official described the scope as deliberate: "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."
What "Accountability" Covers Up
The administration's framing of "accountability" runs directly against the history of what these protections were built to prevent. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 was passed after Watergate, explicitly to stop presidents from using the federal workforce as a personal loyalty machine. Appeal rights and due process protections exist because the alternative, which this order now delivers, is a workforce that knows it can be removed for any reason, political or otherwise.
The order formally permits firing employees who demonstrate "subversion of Presidential directives." That phrase carries no legal definition. Whether a senior EPA scientist recommending stricter methane rules is "subverting a presidential directive" will now be decided entirely by the agency head, with no independent review.
When OPM published proposed Schedule Policy/Career regulations in April 2025, the agency received over 40,000 public comments. Approximately 94% of commenters opposed the rule. The administration proceeded anyway.
The Scale That Could Have Been
OPM's original estimate was that Schedule Policy/Career could cover up to 50,000 positions. Some earlier analyses put the possible ceiling as high as 200,000. The 8,000 positions in the June 4 order are the administration's initial deployment. The order does not rule out expansion. The White House appendix listing affected positions runs across every major civilian agency.
Federal union leaders and civil service watchdog groups note that each successive expansion has been framed as targeted and narrow. The pattern from DOGE's mass RIF campaigns and Schedule F's earlier trajectory suggests the floor is not the ceiling.
Legal Challenges Already Filed
The creation of Schedule Policy/Career is already the subject of active federal litigation. Plaintiffs, led by Democracy Forward, argue the classification violates due process, exceeds presidential authority, and contradicts the Civil Service Reform Act. The June 4 executive order formalizing the conversion could reignite pending Congressional legislation designed to block the move.
Courts have not yet resolved the central legal question: whether a president can by executive order strip statutory protections that Congress granted to career civil servants. That fight is now live, with 8,000 workers in the middle of it and a seven-day clock already running on their records.
Sources
- Federal News Network: Trump moves about 8,000 federal positions to Schedule Policy/Career
- NPR: Trump strips job protections from 8,000 federal workers
- White House: Implementing Schedule Policy/Career in the Excepted Service (Executive Order)
- The Hill: Trump signs order to ease firing of federal workers
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